The European supersport category welcomes back the Honda CBR600RR for 2024 after seven years away, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy one.
Pricing for the 2024 CBR600RR hasn’t yet been published by Honda, but it’d be a fair guess to say that it will cost rather a lot more than £7,000 when it arrives early next year. But, for just £91 more than that, you can buy yourself a 2016 Honda CBR600RR with a very similar spec.
Mechanically, the 2016 CBR600RR is more or less exactly the same as the 2024 model, with a 41mm Showa Big Piston fork up front, a Unit Pro-Link monoshock out back, dual 310mm front discs and a single 220mm rear disc for stopping, and a die-cast aluminium diamond-type frame all wrapped around a 599cc motor pumping out 118bhp.
If you have missed most of the coverage on the ‘24 bike, you might be thinking at this point ‘What has Honda been doing for seven years?’ And the answer lies in electronics.
The 2016 Honda CBR600RR was a development of the 2013 edition, which itself was evolved from the 2009 iteration. Back then, 600s didn’t come with any electronics at all, really, and so the suite of electronic options available to be selected and tuned on the 2024 CBR600RR is the largest differentiator between it and its ancestor.
The question is: do you need electronics?
If you are answering as someone who rides bikes but wants to stay safe above all else, the answer is probably ‘yes’, and that is a totally acceptable position. But, if you ride motorcycles and want to have fun above all else, then you’re probably quite happy to have everything in your hand. And that’s the difference between 2016, the model year of the bike shown here, and 2024.
In the case of the former, you have all the control all of the time; in the case of the latter, you get to decide how much control you want to have. But being able to make that decision is probably going to cost you more than £7,000, and you’re going to have to wait five months…
