I was down at my local friendly Honda dealers the other day shooting the breeze with Kieran the boss when my gaze fell on a sharp-looking naked roadster.
“Here, is that the latest CB1000R? How come I haven’t ridden it?” I said.
“Beats me,” he laughed, tossing me the keys.
Honda’s approach to creating this bike couldn’t have been simpler – it stuck in the engine from the previous generation Fireblade, then removed everything else.
As a result, it’s a motorcycle reduced to its most basic elements, allowing the angular beauty of it to shine, especially that deliciously sculpted tank in brushed silver, although Kieran said it’s just as nice in black or candy red, the other two options.
As well as new frame and wheels, Honda claims that the bike has a more aggressive riding position, but to be honest, the low seat and the wide, high bars make for a nice neutral stance, and one hugely more comfortable than the latest Fireblade, which is basically a road-legal race bike for very small riders with very big talents. And I’m neither.
The mirrors are on the average side of average, and the new 5in TFT screen might be a tiddler compared to the 10.25in ones on some BMWs, but it’s bright and clear and has all the info you need – speed, rpm, gear, fuel and three tiny dials showing the levels of ABS, traction control and engine braking, although these are so small that I recommend you bring along an electron microscope to read them.
I’m sure like any sensible person, you have one on top of the kitchen cupboards along with a fondue set and a fiendishly complicated coffee machine you used twice before going back to a cafetiere.
This being the 21 st Century, there’s a choice of riding modes at your disposal – Rain, Standard, Sport and User for inveterate fiddlers who want to engage in bespoke tweaking.
Browse more than 19,000 new and used bikes for sale at Autotrader.co.uk/bikes
Press the Go button, and the air fills with a purposeful snarl, as if the bike’s keen to get going, which at speed becomes a frantic buzz like a very angry wasp.
You know, like after they’ve got an income tax bill when they don’t have a job apart from annoying people and pretending to help bees pollinate flowers.
Note to Inland Revenue – stop sending wasps tax bills. It just pisses them off so that they go around stinging people.
That buzzy vibe is tactile as well as audible, creating a strange resonance in my nether regions as I bombed down the motorway.
Still, some people pay good money for that sort of thing, and I did get used to it, as I did to being slightly windblown, this being a naked bike with no screen.
The edgy sound and feel of the bike is like living with a woman who’s exciting but intense, so that although you’re having fun, you can never really relax.
The good news is that even with increasing strangulation of fuelling and exhaust regulations by Euro 5 demands, progress is satisfingly brisk even in Standard mode, with big fat oodles of torque in the midrange, just where you need it.
The other good news is that the handling is superbly light, precise and instinctive, and the optional quickshifter is sublime, making for seamless progress up through the six-speed gearbox and on the way down aided and abetted by an equally brilliant autoblipper.
Even better, the quickshifter is almost as slick in low gears, which few are.
The brakes are beefy but progressive, and the nicely firm suspension suits the sport nature of the bike perfectly.
Right, time to try Sport mode, which is simply done with a toggle switch on the left bar. To make it even simpler for us blokes, it’s marked Mode. We like simple in Bloke World.
Wow, that makes it a completely different bike, and suits the eager nature of the engine, making it a joy to press on, flinging yourself around corners with gay abandon then soaring past assorted Porsches, Ferraris and grannies in Nissan Micras alike with a smile on your face and a song in your heart.
It’s as if that woman I was talking about earlier had taken off her glasses, let down her hair and gone as wild as a wasp who’s just filed his tax return.
Of course I didn’t tell any of this to Kieran back at the dealers, in case he thinks I’m weird or something.
* Bike supplied by Belfast Honda, belfasthonda.com
