Offer me a day in Cape Town with a racy, naked Italian model and you’ll never wait long for an answer. In this instance, the bait that drew me away from Durban was the new Honda CB1000R, conceived and born in Atessa, Italy.
Honda South Africa stresses that the bike is still pure Japanese Honda mechanically, but it was styled and built in Italy for sale mainly in Europe, where sports bikes without all-encompassing bodywork are enormously popular.
Why bare bikes are best
The CB1000R uses the engine from the previous-generation Honda Fireblade superbike, slotted into a die-cast aluminium frame with top-notch suspension and brakes bolted on. There’s also a sexy single-sided swing arm, 43mm upside-down forks and a great-looking underslung exhaust.
For me, naked bikes work stylistically because they leave their engine exposed, whereas superbikes with fairings could have virtually anything tucked away behind the plastic and you’d never know the difference without riding them.
In the CB1000R’s case, the previous-generation Fireblade engine lurking seductively beneath the fuel tank has been retuned, the factory says, to make it user-friendlier and less reliant upon high revs for peak performance.
That’s half true, but the main reason, I believe, is that if the naked bike offered the full 118kW of the 2007 superbike many riders would buy the cheaper version ahead of the 133kW ’08 Fireblade. That doesn’t mean the 92kW CB1000R is a slug, though.
Performance
It can hustle its 217kg down the standing 400m in just over 11 seconds, exceeding 100km/h in less than four and hitting 200km/h just over six seconds later. That’s 0 – 200 km/h in roughly as long as it took you to read the previous sentence – if you’re a fast reader!
Top speed is a tad north of 240km/h, which is as fast as you’ll ever want to go on a motorcycle that offers little or no wind protection.
At the launch we spent an hour or so attacking Cape Town’s Killarney racetrack and established that the kaalgat Honda makes a very acceptable track tool. Killarney has more than its fair share of mid-corner bumps, but despite the lack of a steering damper the front end never got rebellious, even under extreme provocation.
The most I could coerce from the bike was an occasional single shake of the head that never threatened to develop into anything more worrying, although one journalist who consistently laps around 15 seconds a lap slower than I do complained that the bike shook its head “quite viciously when changing gear at full taps over the bumps in the kink”. Ja, well, no, fine.
The handsome midrange spread of torque from 5 000rpm or so also came in useful and I soon found that I could circulate more quickly and smoothly by hanging onto a couple of gears rather than using all six cogs in the gearbox to keep the revs around the peak power mark of 1 0000rpm.
Talking of the gearbox, I have to point out that Honda’s got everything dead right here, with the lever snicking crisply through the gears every time.
The engine lacks the top-end rush of the Fireblade and other superbikes, though, and I’d have preferred it if the factory engineers had taken mercy on the 15 or 20 horses they culled from the herd before they slotted the motor into their new naked bike. They’re not necessary, of course, but for me they’d be most welcome, and the latest Fireblade would still have a 25kW or so advantage over the cheaper, less sporty offering.
When you need to stop suddenly at up to 240km/h it makes no difference whether you have 92kW or 133kW trying to escape from between your legs. The new Honda uses the same four-pot front brake calipers as the latest Fireblade, albeit mated to smaller discs, and they worked fine for me at the track and on the road ride we took from Killarney to Hellshoogte and back in the afternoon.
‘ABS way to go’
For R4 000 extra there’s an ABS option that uses different three-pot calipers and I spent some time at the track astride a bike so equipped. It surprised me that that the brakes felt the same, probably because I wasn’t indulging in any real heroics on the stoppers.
In the cut and thrust of racing no doubt the non-ABS version would prove better, but on the street I believe the ABS is the way to go. Honda says the clamps on the ABS version are linked front and rear, with pressure on the foot pedal activating one of the three pots on the right front caliper as well as the back brake, which worried me in principle, but in practice it proved dead unobtrusive.
In the lifetime of the bike the ABS system is very likely to prevent at least one whoopsy, and that one alone could save many times the cost of the ABS system and possibly a couple of lives.
Interestingly, on the road at anything over 200km/h, windblast on the naked bike started feeling intrusive, while down the pit straight at Killarney I repeatedly saw 220km/h on the speedo without noticing the wind once. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the time spent at 220km/h was so short on the racetrack and that the adrenalin was pumping.
Popularity climbing
Naked bikes are more popular than superbikes in Europe, but have never sold as well in South Africa since fully faired sports machines first became the norm in the ’80s. Since 2005, though, popularity has been steadily climbing – the bikes are quick, more comfortable, and fun to ride, as well as being cheaper than their sportier looking brethren.
For long trips, aftermarket screens and luggage can be fitted, making the CB1000R and others of its ilk more suitable than superbikes for touring. In the Honda’s case the passenger accommodation is rather frugal, making the CB1000R less than ideal for long hauls, but for everything else it’s very, very appealing.
Pricing is R98 000 for the non-ABS version, but if I were buying one I’d cough up the extra R4 000 and get the bike with the anti-lock brakes.