#cbr650f

Sometimes OEMs just like to show off how cool they are, and this year, Honda featured the work of its R&D facility in Rome. The featured project was this tasty-looking CB4 ‘Interceptor’ Concept.

Once upon a time there was the Honda CBR600F, or Hurricane as it was called in the U.S. The magazines tripped all over themselves and I thought maybe I would spend my GI Bill tuition for one, but they were all sold out and I got a left-over 500 Interceptor instead – my first new motorcycle! Just as well, there was less plastic to scrape up.

On the surface, the 2017 Honda CBR650F and its naked sibling the CB650F don’t look much different than their 2016 versions apart from their new graphic schemes. The overall visual design, including their oh-s0-sexy cascading header pipes are back, and the underslung silencer has only a slightly different shape. Underneath the familiar skin, however, are a few updates that further refine Honda’s two 650 models.

Honda is dipping its toe in the suddenly trendy scrambler waters, introducing a concept model based off of its CB650F and CBR650F platform. The CB Six50 Concept, like the CB4 roadster concept, is a design exercise from Honda R&D Europe presented at EICMA.

Honda revealed a couple of concepts based on its 650 models at the 2015 EICMA show. Pictured here is the CB4, a naked roadster, which was joined by the CB Six50 scrambler. No official information was released, as they appear to be a simply design exercises from Honda R&D Europe and unlikely to develop into a production model (but we can hope!).

Recently, we here at Motorcycle.com brought you one of our biggest tests to date, in the form of our 2014 Middleweight Mash-Up Six-Way Shootout. In it, we wrangled six bikes with minimal  or non-existant fairings, ranging in displacement from 471cc ( Honda CB500F) to 690cc ( KTM 690 Duke) and put them to the test.

Some of us remember a time when you didn’t have to be folded up like a preying mantis to ride a 600cc supersport bike. What Millenials, Generation Z, Plurals – or whatever the heck the media is calling the desirable, young market segment this week – may not know from personal experience is that something was lost in the sportbike wars over the last 20 years. Yes, we’ve seen some amazing technological advancement in power delivery and handling, but as the manufacturers went through their two year cycles of ground up reimagining of their hottest middleweights in search of the all-important racing titles across the globe, the relentless sharpening of the performance envelope has come with some costs.