Honda commissioned a limited-edition drawing of the CBR1100XX. There were 210 of these prints made. The small, 5x7 drawing shows the machine and the military aircraft that inspired its name, the Super Blackbird. It's a beautiful piece of art, but what is more significant are the signatures below. One is from the designer of the motorcycle, saying, "I hope you enjoy riding this bike as much as I enjoyed riding it."
The other is more poignant, to me. It says, simply, "This bike reflects the wishes of Honda's R&D."
A bit of background. Kawasaki had seized the title of performance king from Honda early on in the development of four-cylinder, four-stroke motorcycle, the Z1 eclipsing the CB750. In the mid-1990s, the Kawasaki ZX-10 and ZX-11 were jaw-dropping fast, the epitome of performance. Honda wanted to be known as the builder of the fastest production bike on the planet. It gave its designers a clean sheet to work from, and the result was a bike that, in the words of one British magazine, shook up and redefined an entire class of motorcycle.
But this post isn't about the Blackbird. It's about what the bike represented. The Blackbird was the end result of clean-sheet thinking, a relatively free hand given to the designer, and the result was something that 20 years later, still amazes.
I'm not about to tell you that I could even ride a modern RC213V. There's a reason that the teams don't do the year-end journo rides any more - most of us couldn't even get the tires up to operating temperatures, or learn in a reasonable amount of time the start and launch procedures for the bike.
But it's not the motorcycle HRC would want to build. It is hobbled by restrictions to electronics, limited by silly regulations about clutches, etc. With these lines of development (as opposed to refinement) essentially closed off, now HRC must spend its time in the wind tunnel, chasing gains in aerodynamics that will have absolutely zero value in the real world.
The RC213V is an amazing machine. But it does not reflect the wishes of Honda R&D. And that is just a little sad.
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