Honda have ke pt it old sc hool with the newcaféracer inspired CB thou’ but is it tea and toast or champagne and foie gras?

WORDS: BOOTHY IMAGES: HONDA

HONDA CB1000R

It’s easy to think that a fairingless, street bike with big handlebars and a Fireblade engine is nothing new. And with as thriving a ‘super-naked’ sector as there currently is, who is going to get hard over an updated CB1000R? Well, not me, but thankfully erectile dysfunction, on this occasion, isn’t going to be a problem as Honda haven’t just thrown ABS and a few new colour schemes at an outdated model, they have gone back to the drawing board and completely reinvented the wheel.

Okay it’s still the running the same 2006 ‘Blade engine as its predecessor, but that’s where the similarities end (and even that isn’t that similar); in fact the Big H haven’t just gone down the already well blazed trail of the naked sports bike. Instead, they have created a sort of hybrid machine that is somewhere between a café racer of the past and a hyper naked of the future, a theme they have christened ‘Neo Sports Café’.

We went to Malaga in the south of Spain to find out what the guys from Honda were smoking when they came up with the idea, and to see if they have pulled it off.

You don’t need to be up close and personal with the CB1000R to see it’s a good looking bike. It’s a meaty looking thing with trapezoid proportions that give it a real planted look. It comes in three different colours: Matt Bullet Silver, Candy Chromosphere Red or Graphite Black (so that’s silver, red or black) although in all fairness the only part of the bike in coloured paint is the fuel tank. Now even more naked than the day it was born, Honda have stripped right back when it comes to frilly bits of plastic bodywork, claiming only six pieces of plastic on the entire bike’s external get-up, going for smart looking brushed aluminium instead.