Riding With Ray
RIDING WITH RAY
American Honda's VP on the CB1000R—and on the CB1000R!
WHEN WE ARRANGED OUR TRIP TO EUROPE to try Honda's sporty naked bike, we weren't sure if Big Red's American arm was even thinking about bringing the CB1000R stateside. But the thought had crossed their minds! Turns out, there was even a black non-ABS model being run around SoCal for "evaluation purposes." And the bike has won some fans at the company, although the fate of this 998cc machine for us Over Here is far from decided.
"Price is one of the big problems," says Ray Blank, VP at American Honda, pictured here astride the CB1 000R on Angeles Crest Highway. "It was conceived by Europe for Europe and is made by Honda Italy. This means we have to buy it in euros, and that makes the pricing an issue in the U.S."
Blank spoke trankly about flow the bike compares to some past products from Honda in the same category. "We tend sometimes to make an engine too `electric,'" he admits. "The torque curve on the CB-R is strong on the bottom and linear, but the engine still has character. The whole bike has character, and that is going to become more important in the market during coming years."
Blank was enthused to use the 1 000R
for the interview-op Sunday-morning ride, and even gave me another go. He remarked that I fit the expected demographic; that is, sporting riders between 40 and 60 years old, who don't necessarily want to live every day
hunched over on a supersport bike but till want powerful erformance.
"A lot of people ought cruisers were oing to get buyers ho wanted to transi ion away from full-on portbikes, but that's ot happening, and I ink this is a product ey would like," he says. "The challenge
is whether we can sell enough units to make it worthwhile to do all the things we have to do if we import it: build the parts and service infrastructure to support the bike, promote it, do the DOT/EPA certification. On the plus side, we'd save some money because we don't have to pay for development."
One of the biggest sues at the moment, though, is the state of the economy and the huge sales drops that all the major manufac turers are reporting, which makes the gamble that much riskier.
So, Ray, will it be a 2010 model? "The soonest we could have the bike would be as a 2011." Good news is, he didn't say no! -Mark Hoyer
