Honda CBR1000RR - Performance Per Dollar Sportbike Comparison Test

If you wanted a superbike for sport-touring, we all agree the CBR1000RR would be it: Comfortable, natural ergonomics greet everyone who climbs on. Even though it's in the middle of the range size- and weight-wise, the CBR, for some reason, just seems a tad more spacious and substantial, and running along the superslab at 80-ish, the CBR's requisite Showa Big Piston Fork and new "balance-free" shock do smooth work. While the Euros have been busy extracting gobs of wild-animal horsepower from their one-liter engines and controlling it with electronic whips and chairs, Honda has carried on quietly with the CBR's 153-hp tea ceremony of a 999cc inline-Four (though you can rest assured the boys in its electronics backroom have not been snoozing). The result is an engine so refined and with such linear power delivery, nobody really much missed the 26 horses the CBR gives up to the BMW. Or realized the CBR's power output is nearly identical to that of the heavier (by 26 lb.) Aprilia, at lower rpm.

Incredibly, our scales have the big CBR at just 5 lb. heavier than the 600. And though its heavier engine internals keep it from turning quite as quickly as that bike, it's close. The bike's chassis translates whatever the rider asks for into graceful forward progress, with perfectly linear steering and just the right amount of feedback from the BPF fork and the beautifully weighted front brake lever. The whole CBR feels like an organic thing as it sucks up pavement. Without a quickshifter, the CBR shifts almost better than any of the others anyway. Greased butter. On it, guys like Rapp and Don Canet, who seemed to enjoy smearing rubber at every exit on the TC bikes five minutes ago, revert to bad accents and claim they don't need no steenkin' traction control. In fact, those two both ranked the CBR second.

As for me, now that I've seen the promised land, I ain't goin' back to depending on my own poor judgment on bikes this powerful. But it is nice to gaze out upon a simple, logical instrument panel, to be able to find the horn and turnsignal buttons without having to feel your way past the TC toggles, and to check your six o'clock for CHP bogies without having to move your elbow onto the gas tank and crane your neck. Greg White is right: If you went ahead and bought this Honda, you'd never regret it.

UPS DOWNS
Honda CBR1000RR * Smooth, refined, comfortable * No electronics to dilute the experience * A more dignified low-T midlife crisis * Is “practical superbike” an oxymoron? * No electronics to save your bacon * Barely cheaper than the winner of this test
SPECIFICATIONS
PRICE|$14,440 (Repsol)
DRY WEIGHT|420 lb.
WHEELBASE|55.6 in.
SEAT HEIGHT|32.3 in.
FUEL MILEAGE|41 mpg
0-60 MPH|2.6 sec.
1/4 MILE|9.98 sec. @ 141.49 mph
HORSEPOWER|152.9 hp @ 10,715 rpm
TORQUE|78.2 ft.-lb. @ 9640 rpm
TOP SPEED|173 mph

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