Hot Wheels
Honda motorcycles and scooters India President and CEO, Keita Muramatsu at a press conference in Chennai, confirmed to reporters that the much anticipated CBR650F would be seeing a July 2015 launch.
The fully faired bike borrows cues from its 600 and 1000cc CBR brethren, with sharp styling and a functional fairing that should make long high speed riding less stressful. It’s also less aggressive and more comfortable than its super sports brothers featuring not too low clip-on handlebars and less than aggressive foot peg position.
The Honda CBR650F features an all-new 649cc inline-four engine that Honda says has been engineered to deliver high torque in the low-to-mid rpm range, especially below 4,000 rpm. The accessible power-band should make for a comfortable city bike, while the uncompromising top-end whack should be enough to satisfy all but the most hard-core of speed freaks. Picking an engineering staff that is mostly in its 20’s to develop this machine; Honda hopes that the new CBR650F will appeal to younger buyers.
Honda says that steel twin-spar frame for the CBR650F has a tuned rigidity balance along with cast pivot plates and aluminium swing-arm — i.e. the Honda CBR650F is much stiffer around the headstock and more flexible in the spar sections. However, despite the intelligent design, the bike weighs 210 kilos.
One complaint is the suspension. The mid-range Showa units look too spindly to provide any sort of quality in damping, a big risk from Honda, considering even Royal Enfield now offers top of the line parts on their newer bikes.
The Honda CBR650F is positioned to appeal to first time riders as well as experienced riders looking to graduate from their lightweight sport bikes while not compromising on ride-ability and comfort. A large portion of buyers are expected to use the bike as a platform for making it their own, so expect to see a few modern 4 cylinder customs on roads near you.
With an expected price of around 7-8 lakhs for the bike, suspension upgrades won’t break the bank and should provide for a very capable piece of kit.
Honda CBR 650F
