Honda CB1000R Black Edition ‘If you want garage appeal, the Honda has it by the bucket-load’
Who’d have thought the CB1000R could get any more sophisticated and alluring? But it has. Even though Honda managed to paint the whole thing black…
The CB is the class of this test. If you want garage appeal, the Honda has it by the anodised bucket-load. Fundamentally it’s the same as the 2020 model – same Fireblade-derived engine, same chassis, same brakes – but from a styling point of view there are crucial differences for those riders who enjoy a detail or 19. Take that rear end. A new aluminium subframe has let the designers sharpen the whole job, with the linking surfaces giving it the feel of an impossibly well-resolved custom. Wander directly behind the bike and you’ll notice the truncated ring of the LED running light somehow makes the tail unit look even slimmer than it already is. Neat touches are everywhere – I’d been gazing at it for five minutes before I noticed the machining on the handlebar clamp exactly matches that of the new multi-spoke wheels.
‘The styling is so clever,’ says an equally smitten Rupe. ‘The people who dropped out of university are the Suzuki stylists. They were smoking weed and missing lectures. The people who really paid attention went on to design the CB1000R because it’s a masterclass of interlocking surfaces. The more you look at it, the more you notice and it’s been designed to be looked at from every angle – apart from the exhaust, which you can’t do much about.’
The all black edition is new for this year and though blacking out a bike is usually a way of making tatty details disappear while gluing
together a hotchpotch of shapes and surfaces, that’s not the case here. The CB’S black stuff is special too – the radiator shrouds, flyscreen and pillion cover plate are anodised black, for example, and the Showa big piston forks have black sliders as well as legs. Only the exhaust looks as though they’ve just slapped some black paint on. The design polish is matched by the Honda’s feel when you’re riding too – the engine and suspension are a class act, up to a point. Honda have adjusted the fuelling to improve the throttle response, and in Road mode it’s now so smooth during the transition from off to on throttle that you forget about it immediately and just get on with riding (the old bike had a slight snatch). Sport mode still has a slight tetchiness about it at low revs, but you barely notice it after an hour in the saddle. And the power delivery is just what you’d hope for in a supernaked. The engine is velvety smooth around town, delivers copious torque in the midrange and has enough top end to send your licence to the shredder. Compared with the others though, it’s almost too sophisticated. It’s a wonderful road bike engine and could never be considered bland, but in this company it’s rather anonymous – the
S1000R has its loopy top-end, the GSX-S is all whooshing muscle and the MT-10 is a certifiable lunatic.
You need to be in Sport mode to stand a chance of keeping up with the others too. The Honda is 24bhp down on the BMW and though only making 10bhp less than the GSX-S it feels like more because of the Suzuki’s bulging midrange. When Bike’s superfast tester Bruce Dunn was on the Honda, I could keep him in sight. When he was on anything else, I struggled.
But if you’re not chasing a Bruce across the Bedfordshire countryside, the Honda is the best place to be. The suspension is softer than the others’ – even the clever BMW can’t change its spring rates – and for 90 percent of the time the CB gives a user-friendly mix of ride quality and poise. Only when you go bananas does the rear shock start to feel out of its depth, wallowing mid-corner where the others – especially the BMW – feel taut and untroubled.
The Honda is fun to thrash though, partly because the bars are much narrower than the Suzuki’s and Yamaha’s and the riding position is compact enough to make it feel racey. ‘It’s got a lovely feel,’ says Rupe, ‘and it also seems small compared with the others.’