A new four-cylinder, water-cooled nakedbike with neo-retro café racer styling was the star of Honda’s stand at the EICMA show in Milan.
That concept was basically a styling job, using the CB650F as its basis. However, it’s likely that the production Neo Sports Café – or NSC – will instead be a replacement for the CB1000R.
The evidence for this is pretty strong. There’s a brief glimpse of the engine in Honda’s teaser video, and while it doesn’t match any existing production motor, it could be a revamped version of the old Fireblade engine used in the CB1000R. The CB1000R is currently dead – it’s never been given Euro 4 certification – but the market for 1000cc-class nakedbikes is relatively strong. With a 1000cc engine, Honda’s NSC could be a stylish alternative to Yamaha’s MT-10, Suzuki’s GSX-S1000 or Kawasaki’s Z1000.
The other option – a 650cc machine like the CB4 concept – is less attractive. It would need to be much cheaper, and hence less profitable, and would rival the existing CB650F. So it’s easy to see that the larger bike would be more tempting for Honda’s product planners.
There’s even a chance the firm will increase the capacity to 1100cc, or more. It’s certainly not mimicking Yamaha in using its current superbike engine for the naked; this will be a different motor to the one used in the 2018 Fireblade. By taking the 2004-2007 Fireblade motor and reworking it with extra capacity for more torque and lower revs, it would be both more tractable and more suited to passing today’s emissions tests.
By Ben Purvis
