Happy 20th Birthday to the Honda CBR 600

Happy Birthday to the hostory making bike...Happy birthday to a pair of milestone motorcycles: the Honda CBR600 and Fireblade.It’s now 20-years since the CBR600 first entered into our motorcycling lives and in that time it’s transformed itself from a 80bhp, 140mph machine into the latest fire-breathing 118bhp, 170mph CBR600RR-7. The secret of the CBR’s success is that it’s been everything to everyone. Like the VFR, for some it’s a sportsbike, for some it’s a sports-tourer: it has a real DIY DNA which can turn its hand to pretty much anything, bar off-roading!Novices love ‘em, biking returnees love ‘em, people even trade down from litre-class superbikes and love ‘em. The CBR is almost a generic term for ‘motorcycle’. Over the years the CBR has moved from the road-biased ‘F’ model through to the latest track-oriented ‘RR’ model.In contrast the Honda FireBlade, which celebrates its 15th birthday in 2007, has always had that wild side.Back in the late 1980s litre sportsbikes were – as a rule – large, fast, fat and heavy. But then Tadao Baba decided to ignore the-then current trends and in 1992 the CBR900RR FireBlade was born. Here was a bike with plenty of power (110-120bhp) in a light, sporty chassis that could run rings around the opposition. It did something that litre sportsbike didn’t do very well: it went around corners…As time progressed the opposition caught up with bikes such as the Yamaha YZF-R1, Suzuki GSX-R1000 and Kawasaki ZX-10R, meanwhile the FireBlade softened around the edges a little. The latest Fireblade (nope, no capital ‘B’ anymore…) now boasts MotoGP styling, 160bhp, 1000cc and more user-friendliness than rival litre sportsbikes. Whether you think that’s a good thing or not is up to you. Either way… HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!