papers, when stacked up against the
likes of the R1 - even if it contin ues to
set the pace in the showroom, as well as
on the race track.
For, while Jim Moodie delivered to
Honda a 50th birthday present in 1998
by winning the world's most prestigious
street-bike race, the Isle of Man Prod uction 'IT (clocking up Honda's l00th 'IT
victory in the process), on the Honda
Britain CBR900RR prepared by RS Performance, and Steve Plater clinched the
British Powerbike title on a tuned-up,
slick-shod 900RR from the same source,
Honda's portbike supreme has continued to lead sales around the world partly thanks to a shortage of Rl and
Zee-9 product, but partly also to the fact
that, the RR is still the benchmark bike
of the late 20th entury for thousands of
customers the world over.
It's called building on success - but
first you have to have the success to
build on, and in establishing a whole
new category of performance motor- cycles when it was launched back in
1992, the CBR900RR did just that. In
spade. Only, you can have too much of
a good thing, and while we won't ever
know exactly why Honda has opted to
keep the fundarnenta I CBR9 essentially
unchanged in the face of the commercial
challenge represented by the Rl's more
radical approach, the fact is that a
replacement for the CBR900RR, the FireBlade (as it's called in Europe), isn't
scheduled to appear for at least another
two years.
Good for exi ting customers in maintaining trade-in values, less so for those
tasked with keeping Honda's end up on
the howroom floor - or the race track,
where the men charged by Honda
Britain with running their street-bike-.
derived race operations, RS Performance boss Russell Savory and team
manager Mick Grant, could foresee a
tough year ahead in 1999.
Alongside the task of repeating their
'97 British Supersport 600 title (followed
by a dead heat on points with Suzuki for
the '98 crown) with the just-launched,
all-new CBR600, RS saw problems in
terms of defending Honda's Production
TT supremacy, as well as making the
900 competitive in the British Production Championship due to be run in
conjunction with Europe's leading
domestic Superbike series in the UK
next season.
"Racing ell
portbikes, so for
Honda Britain, we knew it would be
commercially important to keep the
CBR900RR up front," says Savory. '1t's
such a good bii
