I try to keep my promises. Not long ago, I reckoned that the old, steel-framed Honda CBR600 was stupendously good value and that I intended to buy one myself.
For those who don’t know, the CBR600 belongs in Honda’s ‘Quality Era’, when the engineers seemed to have trumped the bean-counters, resulting in such treasures as the VFR750, ST1100, VFR400 and original Africa Twin. It was a perfect fusion of power, speed, handling, comfort, user-friendliness and price, combined with superlative reliability.
CBR sixes just didn’t break. Camchain tensioners sometimes stuck and reg/ recs fried – and that was it. Stories of 100,000-milers are legion.
There are loads on eBay, too. Decent ones start at £500. I bought an immaculate, original (inc. exhaust) ’93 P model with 23K miles, history, new tyres,…
