Honda CBR 900RR Fireblade

The Fireblade is simply the superbike by which all others arc currently judged. At the cutting-edge of superbike technology, the Fireblade combines superlative performance with light weight and peerless handling to create a bike that many have tried to imitate but none has equalled.  Motorcycle manufacturers love to announce 'revolutionary new concepts' in motorcycle design, but realistically few of them ever conic up with any such thing.

Yet the Fireblade is one such machine. Launched in 1992, it re-wrote the rule book for performance motorcycles, combining litre bike power in a package the size and weight of a 600. Overnight, the rest of the supersport litre bike class became dinosaurs. What previously was thought to be the pinnacle of motorcycle performance was suddenly rendered obsolete.  So what makes the Fireblade so special? Very simply, it is the combination of a powerful engine in a small, lightweight machine, fitted with state-of-the-art suspension and brakes.

The engine itself is nothing exceptional, being a very familiar water-cooled DOHC 1 6-valve in-line four putting out 125bhp - pretty much the industry standard for a 1000cc machine. 

The chassis is an aluminium-alloy beam, again an industry standard in the supersports category, with a pair of hefty 45mm telescopic forks at the front and a multi-adjustable rising-rate monoshock at the back. Interestingly, Honda ignored the current trend for fitting inverted telescopic forks and a 17-inch front wheel to the Fireblade, instead opting for ordinary telescopic forks and a 16-inch wheel. Brakes are a pair of 296 mm discs at the front with four-piston calipers, and a single 240 mm disc at the back.  Looking at the specification sheet of the Fireblade, it's hard to work out quite why this is such an exceptional motorcycle.

The sum of the parts doesn't seem to add up to anything more than what is on offer from the other manufacturers of superbikes, yet in use the Fireblade stands head and shoulders above everything except the priciest hand-built exotica from Italy.  On the road the Fireblade is so light and so nimble it feels like a race-bred middleweight, yet it packs the punch of a bike from the heavyweight division.

The steering response is razor-sharp and allows the Fireblade to be flicked through corners at tremendous speed and with absolute precision. Although the Fireblade may not be the fastest bike on the roads (a top-speed of 165 mph is a good 10mph down on machines like the Kawasaki ZZ-R1100), it is almost certainly die fastest bike point-to-point. The ease with which it corners, brakes and accelerates means that off the motorway there's nothing to touch it (except another Fireblade).  The nature of the Fireblade means that this is not a bike for the faint-hearted or for the touring motorcyclist. It is cramped and not at all comfortable, nor is it very practical. But for pure, hedonistic motorcycling at the very edge of the performance envelope there isn't much that comes close. 

The Fireblade has raised superbike performance to a level now where the only limits are those of the rider rather than those of the machine. Motorcycle manufacturers will continue to produce better and better machines, but the Fireblade will be remembered as the bike that brought perfection to the masses, and at an affordable price.

Source of review: Super Bikes  by Mac McDiarmid

Others had promised, but in 1993 Honda delivered. With double-strength open-class power infused into a scalpel-sharp middleweight-sized package, the CBR900RR exploded every existing sportbike standard.

In the fall of 1992, Honda unleashed the 1993 CBR900RR upon an unsuspecting market, and the only thing it had trouble eating up was the ensuing mountain of acclaim.

The enthusiast press led off the parade of praise, and the entire motorcycling world soon fell into lockstep to hail this revolutionary large-displacement sportbike. The litany was endless: Light is might. Less is more. A dream bike. Open-class horsepower with 600-class handling. The accolades cascaded like water from an alpine mountain and for good reason. Perhaps the editors of Cycle magazine most accurately summed things up when they wrote, "This motorcycle will explode any notions you have about how an open-class bike can handle—other literbikes feel like Greyhound buses by comparison."

At a comparatively light 408 pounds, the original 900RR held a whopping 80-pound weight advantage over its next-lightest rival. Separated by such an unassailable gulf, the new Honda stood alone in a class of one. In fact, the CBR900RR tilted the scales at a trifling two pounds more than its smaller sibling, the much-praised CBR600F2—an outstanding sportbike in its own right.

Yet the RR pumped out a measured 104 rear-wheel horsepower on the Cycle dyno, and was good for a quarter-mile time of 10.59 seconds at 132.74 mph-numbers that put the new Honda in a rarified atmosphere. Moreover, with a wheelbase of only 55.1 inches, the CBR900 was shorter than any sporting middleweight of its era. At long last, here was a motorcycle that would finally deliver on the promise of open-class power combined with speed-of-thought handling.

And nothing was lost in the details: The beautifully crafted all-aluminum twin-spar frame with a heavily braced aluminum swingarm could be considered a work of art were it not so splendidly functional. The massive 45mm aluminum-slider cartridge fork could be adjusted for spring preload and rebound damping, while the Pro-Link rear suspension also added compression-damping adjustment to these other features.

Naturally, the buying public pounced upon the 900RR like it was manna from heaven. And racers? Well, they knew this was the machine that would bring them to the promised land, the one flowing with checkered flags and podium finishes. In the ensuing eight years, the RR racked up race win after race win and captured seven National class championships. In sprint races and endurance races alike, the CBR900 immediately and firmly established itself as the machine to beat, and that legacy continues to this day, with Honda's awe-inspiring CBR929RR winning the Formula Xtreme title in its first year.

In truth, the 1993 CBR900RR set off a revolution in the large-displacement superbike class, and after nine years other manufacturers still target Honda's sporting flagship as the mark to shoot for. As iron sharpens iron, this competitive fray has only served to hone all sportbikes to a finer point; today's machines are better than many enthusiasts could have ever imagined, thanks to the revolutionary CBR900RR.