when you hammer the throttle, but it feels a little
anemic compared to even some of its Japanese
rivals. Honda Europe claims 143 horsepower and
our colleagues at Cycle World have dyno'd this
same bike we've been testing at 121 horsepower.
You've got four ECU modes in the five-inch TFT
screen with the CB—Rain, Standard, Sport and
User—but it's effectively three modes, as User
allows you to choose the various parameters you
want from the other three modes and combine
them into one. That means the power you want,
traction control and engine brake control, all have
three available settings of their own.
This being so, the CB still has plenty of grunt for
pretty much any situation. Sport mode (like it can
on many other bikes) can be a bit snatchy at the
throttle so I spent most of the time in Standard. If
you want to get a bit of a hoon on, you can switch
off the traction control (very un-Honda), which
will let you loft the front wheel when you like but
if you try and do so even on level one TC, it'll let
you carry a little wheelie but then cut the forward
drive viciously, at which point it takes about two
seconds for drive to be restored.
At this point, I started to have nightmarish
flashbacks to the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR at
VOLUME 59 ISSUE 39 SEPTEMBER 27, 2022 P119
