Back To The Future

- Jon Urry

Two factors are crucial to a bike either succeeding or failing – looks and feel. You can build the best performing machine on the market, but if its aesthetics aren’t up to scratch it will bomb. And by the same token, if its ride is lacking that certain spark of excitement, it is also almost certainly doomed to failure. Sadly for Honda, the outgoing CB1000R model managed to fall flat on its face on both these counts.

On paper there was nothing that wrong with the CB; it was a Fireblade-powered naked that promised to propel Honda into the emerging full-on super naked class. But far from the rip-snorting ride that everyone expected, the CB delivered turbine-like power that somehow made over 120bhp feel lackluster and mundane. And then there was the look, which was too ‘safe’ and failed to push the boundaries or excite.

With this in mind, I have to be honest, I wasn’t expecting a great deal from the updated CB1000R and approached it rather expecting to be disappointed – as it turned out I was very wrong indeed…

ATTENTION TO DETAIL Up close and personal, you have to hand it to Honda as a tremendous job has been done with the CB’s styling. The marketing waffle says the look is based on a ‘neo sports café’ theme, but I’m just hugely impressed by the classy feel and upmarket impression the new CB delivers.