Staff Bikes
•Honda CBR650R •Kawasaki ZX-6R
So the CB1000R Neo Café Racer has been returned to Honda. A 10-month stay with Fast Bikes saw this new incarnation of the CB pass through two keepers, but ridden by us all with a genuine appreciation for the capabilities of this bike, despite having to do a lot of head scratching on where to place it.
It’s had quite a journey; well, a few actually. Martin was the first keeper, racking up as many miles as he could, as quickly as he could to get it through the 600-mile first service and way beyond completing 3,500 of the total 5,200 completed in 10 months. With a late arrival of the Honda, Martin timed his departure from FB towers beautifully with the end of the summer, thus I got the rough end of the stick with the weather, but that did not stifle my enjoyment of ownership.
I inherited the bike with an SP Engineering silencer that gave the Honda an extra BHP and an added meaty growl, some choice Barracuda protection and a set of Pazzo levers that were equally welcomed. I whipped off the SP can for no other reason than to see what the OE fit was like and then given the opportunity, replaced it with a Scorpion can that was just coming out of development. An equal increase in power, beautiful aesthetics and the chance for Scorpion to look at the CB1000R, which they will be kitting out for Ron Haslam as his school instructors will have them on fleet.
I didn’t manage any time on track unfortunately, though. Martin had a
good run around Castle Combe, cherishing his damaged sliders as he was knee-down with an ease that is testament to the clearance of the CB thou. Boothy had the front dangling in the air for much of the ‘Get Naked’ test in January’s issue where the CB1000R came in a very solid last, but then it was up against Suzuki’s GSX-S1000, Kawasaki’s Z1000 and Yamaha’s MT-10. Bikes more befitting our Fast Bikes testing criteria and although the track element got a slating, the ‘dumbed down 2006 Fireblade engine delivered power with a smoothness unrivalled by anything in this sector...’ Maybe the Honda was more able to participate than exhilarate.
So, as an overview that is what you have with the CB1000R. An exceptionally smooth, well-mannered road bike that will play to an unfamiliar tune, but don’t expect too much from it, because that not what it’s built for. As the big boys said, it is ‘impeccably fuelled’, ‘too comfortable’ and even ‘too practical for its own good’, but for most that is no bad thing. The 2,000-plus miles I put on the bike were without incident and I was out in some pretty nasty conditions with frozen mudstrewn roads, rain and frost that would have had many a rider consider a bus.
On the flip side the road-going qualities of this bike never really exhilarated to the point of unbridled enthusiasm. It gets the job done, delivers you to your destination in a trouble-free, almost mild manner, and will rack up the miles at speed with ease. It’s a lovely bike to ride, great to be seen on and oh, the conversations I have had about its looks at petrol stations have been endless.
The Neo Café Racer style is a real positive for me and I am delighted to see that Honda are sticking with it via the release of the CB650R this year, a bike that I haven’t ridden, but have seen and heard delivers the same sensibilities as its bigger brother.
In the end it’s a Honda, and the CB1000R is just another example of a major manufacturer doing what they do best – producing bloody good bikes. If it ticks your boxes then don’t hesitate to give one a try, just judge it on its own merits and not those of other bikes in the same ‘class’, because there aren’t any. The CB1000R stands out in a class of its own. Thank you Honda, and to all who have helped out making this ownership the positive experience it has definitely been.