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The CBR900RR - Tadao Baba's total control machine.
Released at a time when the hottest road machines were the overweight
GSXR1100 and the slow steering Yam Exup, the Blade moved the goalposts
about 25 miles away.
Wandering into Motorcycle City one day there's a black
and silver Blade marked up at £6,000 - and a decent trade-in
for my Exup. It would be rude not to ...
So one week and a banker's draft later I'm riding
away in total control on Tadao's marvellous invention, wrapped around
the biggest petrol tank in the world. After the Exup this was a
complete revelation. The easiest, quickest steering I had ever experienced.
It felt like you never needed to slow down for corners, just turn
the bars and throw the thing on it's side. But as the speed increased
that 16" front wheel with it's new fangled Bridgestone rubber
did get a little tucky, and a fair few Blades got thrown down the
road after losing the front.
But 185 kilos and 110 bhp were the stuff of GP circuits.
Other than the YZF750 nothing could match the Blade down a good
twisty road. Unless there was a hump backed bridge, or some biggish
bumps. Then the Blade's front wheel left terra firma for rather
longer than was ideal, and tended to land with a bit of a slap on.
Heavier bikes with a more planted front could go through pretty
much flat, but try that on the Blade and you'd be spitting out bits
of hedge and birds' nests. I should have fitted a steering damper,
but we didn't really know what they were so never thought of it.The
famous cubby hole under the pillion saddle was brilliant. The first
bike with a flip-up boot. It still is the only one, come to that.
 Brakes
dynamite, gearbox a tadge notchy, light cable clutch with loads
of feel, nice step in the power band around 7000 rpm - just right
to unstick that floaty front end when giving it some torment. And
special little holes in the bellypan to aid something or other in
the aerodynamic department at speed. Phwar .. this is a race bike,
no mistake.
Problems? Not many .. the pegs were too low and the bars were
angled too far forward, so you got an odd pain in the wrist after
a while. The bars were easily sorted by ditching the security
bolt and twiddling them back a bit, but I never got round to fitting
rearsets, preferring the gentle skrish of ally peg on tarmac.
Honda calmed it all down a bit for the following model,
the Urban Tiger thing. Too many riders had stacked their RRNs and
they weren't always "meeting the nicest people" on their
Hondas. Meeting too many nurses and policemen instead. So that was
the end of the beginning for the Blade. And nothing since has ever
come close to imitating that amazing leap in bike technology. Suzuki
did it in '85 with the GSXR750R, but the CBR900RR did it better
- and it had more Rs in it.
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