King of Speed

KING OF SPEED

New bikes '97

Honda's CBR1100XX Super Blackbird has yet to be released in the U.S., but it's already for sale in Europe. Here's what England's Performance Bikes magazine has to say.

SIMON HARGREAVES

IT’S A WARM, SUNNY SATURDAY afternoon at Bruntingthorpe Proving Grounds. The two-mile slab of concrete is silent, save for the chatter of skylarks and the gentle churning of a tractor in a nearby field. The place seems deserted, except for two pairs of timing lights positioned 32 feet apart near the end of the strip. A narrow, invisible beam of light joins each pair. Two cables link the lights to a box. The box is a big stopwatch, ready to begin counting as soon as the first beam of light is tripped.

A flickering headlight appears out of the shimmering heat haze. Moments later, the angular beak of Honda’s new CBR1100XX Super Blackbird follows, dust vortices swirling up either side. The howling bike swoops down on the timing lights at an improbable velocity. The front wheel breaks the first beam, and the box starts counting. Twelve-thousandths of a second later, the second beam is broken, and almost instantaneously, a number flashes up on the box’s liquid-crystal display: 174 mph. Oh. Is that it?

Well, what did you expect, 190 mph? After all, you can’t believe everything you read in the papers these days. With a tailwind, the Blackbird

might crack 180 mph, but 190? No way, Soichiro. And over the quartermile? How about 10.53 seconds at 134.5 mph? Impressive, but not the stuff of banner headlines.

With the Blackbird’s straightline acceleration out of the way, can we please ignore all this 190-mph bullocks and consider the CBRl 100XX for what it really is?

First, the motor: If you believe Honda, the Blackbird makes 162 horsepower. At the crank, perhaps. At the rear wheel on a Dynojet dyno, the best the engine can “manage” is 139 bhp. Still, if sheer, unadulterated, brain-rotting acceleration is your thing, the Blackbird is where it’s at. From 6500 rpm upwards in any gear, the CBRl 100 crucifies anything on the road. It’s awesome. The Blackbird makes Kawasaki’s potent ZX-l l feel almost...ordinary.

Okay, so the Honda doesn’t have the manic growl of the ram-air ZX-l 1-in fact, the Honda is apologetically whisper quiet. Nor does it have the same intense plateau of top-end power, where the ZX-11 revs on and on forever. The Blackbird just does its stuff quietly.

In the first three gears, the engine revs so hard you have to be quick with the gear selector to keep the motor below its 10,750-rpm redline. Even in top gear from 120 mph, the Blackbird charges forward like no other bike.

There is a downside. In producing all of this high-end power (and gearing the XX to be the fastest bike in the world), Honda made the Blackbird as flat as a pancake right where you need it the most, between 5000 and 6000 rpm. When you want to squirt past the minivan that’s been holding you up, the Honda must be downshifted a gear to produce thrust comparable to a ZX-11 in top gear. And if you really want to waste the van, you’re looking for fourth. By which time, your friend on the ZX-1 1 will have simply opened the throttle and disappeared. Forget the top speed, Honda. Gear it for 150 mph, and give us some serious midrange.

The fairing and windscreen are also not very good-ah, let’s be honest, they’re crap. They probably perform brilliantly in a wind tunnel, but with a 6-foot rider on board, the fairing is too narrow to keep the air off above 120 mph. The wind tears at your arms and shoulders, and you have to drop into a racing crouch to keep your head out of the blast. Conversely, you can cruise at 120 mph on a ZX-1 1, sitting almost upright. The Blackbird is as frustrating as an unfaired standard-style bike-lots of speed in brief bursts, just don’t try to keep up the pace for long periods.

Let’s talk handling. The aging CBR1000 is a real sport-tourer-fast, comfy, smooth and soft. The Blackbird is firmer, lighter and snappier. Riding it is a constant surprise (blimey, this thing steers quickly!). It doesn’t push wide when you shut the throttle in a corner, and it’s easy to change lines mid-corner. The handlebars are close together, presumably to tuck the rider’s arms in for another few mph at the top end.

The Blackbird gets better the faster you ride it. You can chuck the bike about, turn and squirt the power on. Even 140 horsepower won’t spin the rear Bridgestone-although it will shag it fast. It isn’t as plush at lower speeds as the ZX-11, CBR1000 or any Triumph. The fork is non-adjustable, but the rear shock has considerations for spring preload and rebound damping. Unfortunately, the adjusters are so impossible to reach that most riders won’t even bother.

The only time the Blackbird shows its bulk is hard on the brakes, when the back end gets light and begins to squirm from side to side. The brakes are Honda’s linked jobbies, updated with a new delay valve to lessen frontend dive on light, rear-pedal-only applications. Do they work? The answer is yes and no. Yes, they stop the bike quickly. No, they aren’t any better under special circumstances (including the wet, which Honda claims). At best, the linked setup is only as good as normal brakes. At worst, it’s complicated, expensive and heavy.

When you’ve just built the fastest bike in the world, you want people to be able to see where they’re going at night. So you fit the brightest headlight in the world. And it is. The piggyback setup, where the high beam sits on top of the main beam, is fabulously powerful. It lights up the road as if it were, well, daylight. If you stood in front of the beam for any length of time, you’d get a suntan. Stunning.

Sadly, some of the other details usually associated with Honda are missing. The mirrors (with built-in turnsignal indicators) aren’t long enough for a satisfactory rearward view, and there’s no fairing storage compartment. Also, once you’ve worn out the footpeg feelers, the next thing to touch down is the expensive, slabsided fairing. On the plus side, you get a clock, six bungee points (all of which are long enough to clear the bodywork), 180-mile fuel range and an excellent finish.

So there it is. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to decide what the Blackbird is supposed to be. It’s too big and heavy to be a scratcher sportbike, but as a high-powered, long-distance sporttourer it doesn’t quite make the grade, either. If only it had more midrange and a better fairing.

All of which leaves the Blackbird with something of an identity crisis. Sure is fast, though. Maybe that’s all the identity it needs.

Simon Hargreaves is Performance Bikes ’ Deputy Editor. Look for a full road test of the U.S.-spec CBR1100XX in next month ’s Cycle World.