900RR FIREBLADE
It’s 1992. China and Israel have just established diplomatic relations, Wembley Stadium is holding a tribute concert in honour of the recently passed away Freddie Mercury, and Wayne Rainey is about to win the 500cc Motorcycle World Championship. It was to be a memorable year for a handful of reasons, but for those with a propensity to get helmeted and leather clad, the introduction of the very first Honda CBR900RR FireBlade likely outshone any diplomatic, musical or sporting revelations. And for good reason. With all that power (122bhp) and such little weight (185kg), the Blade was said to be a real widow-maker.
Ok, hang on a minute. Widow-maker? Even before I swung a leg over the original Blade, I was a little bit sceptical as to the accuracy of that designation. I mean, my old
dad used to have one of these, and his eyes are dim, his ears are gristled and legs are old and bent – surely if he could tame such a beast, anyone could. And it only took a mile or so to realise that I was right to be dubious – it became all too clear, all too soon, that there would be no arm/socket wrenching aboard the old bus.
As it happens, ‘Old Bus’ might have been a more appropriate moniker for the 1992 FireBlade, and I’ll tell you why. The moment that you sit on the thing, it feels as though you need to stretch yourself out, it’s just so long. And everything looks and feels seriously dated – but that ought not to come as a surprise; it’s a 27-year-old bike.
Despite its age, though, the FireBlade never once failed to start on the button. At tick-over the motor sounded well, if a little subdued (but look at the size of that end-can), but needed a good few minutes to warm up enough to sing. On the move, the 92 Blade revved surprisingly cleanly, albeit not as urgently as I might have liked. There was a slight rattle that was audible, too; you could only really hear it between about 4,000rpm and 7,500rpm and it sounded pretty cam-chain-tensioner-esque.
I found myself using the gearbox a lot, to keep the 893cc engine in its sweet spot, which you might expect on such an old bike would lead to problems. It didn’t. The ’box never once missed a beat and every gear change felt secure and positive.
Smooth, but lethargic acceleration was followed by similarly smooth, but lethargic deceleration. The brakes worked on the CBR, but only just. The front brake lever felt very
soft and had to be squeezed pretty darn hard if you wanted to stand the thing on its nose.
When I did start yanking the brake lever and asking a bit more from the bike in general, the soft suspension made itself known. A placid ride through suburbia would suit the soggy suspension just fine, and even when things got a bit bumpy, out in the sticks, things stayed pretty comfortable, but when the going got tasty, the floppiness of the set up wasn’t conducive to a sharp-handling bike. I had read about the controversial 16-inch front wheel helping the bike turn on a sixpence, but that wasn’t what t I was experiencing. Instead, any input you made seemed to be taken up by an acre of spare suspension, before affecting the trajectory of the bike. And once you did get the thing pithed into a corner, everything seemed to move and shimmy uncomfortably underneath you, inspiring very little confidence to go any faster.
What the 1992 FireBlade had, though, was character, and nostalgia. And it had it by the bucket load. The FireBlade is a household name (well, in any self-respecting home, anyway), so to be riding the bike that made it all happen, the original and very first iteration was pretty bloody special, and something that I’m not likely to forget in a hurry.