Honda will make RC213V for the road - | Motorbike reviews | Latest Bike Videos | MCN Honda insiders have revealed the firm will on Friday announce the plan to put a road-going version of the MotoGP V4 RC213V into production for 2014 as it tries to give a massive boost of excitement to the Honda brand. Honda boss Takanobu Ito will make the announcement on Friday this week as part of a bigger speech outlining the future of the firm with the RC213V production bike being presented as a halo bike which will be hugely expensive and strictly limited in numbers. This is definitely not a replacement for the CBR1000RR Fireblade and will be more akin to the £40,000 Ducati Desmosedici RR which sold out and was built in bigger numbers than first planned despite a massive price tag. The rumours of a road-going Honda based on a MotoGP bike have been doing the rounds since the World Championship ditched 500cc two-strokes in favour of four-stroke 1000cc machines in 2003. It's known Honda was very close to putting a 1000cc V5 into production in 2006 but this never happened for reasons known only to Honda. It now appears Honda is ready to make the leap and in part this may be helped by the firm's decision to make a run of customer specification engines for the Claiming Rule Teams (CRT) in 2013 which will change the way the engines are made. There are no official details at the moment and we will have to wait for the official speech to be given in Tokyo on Friday but it’s understood Ito will make reference to some of the greatest Hondas of the past such as the RC30 when he makes his address. A Honda insider said: "This has been talked about for a while now within Honda but there is now the firm intention to put a bike derived from the MotoGP bike into production so we can show the kind of engineering, passion and excitement Honda has become known for.”
Interesting read, thanks for that. It is widely thought that MotoGP introduced the CRT to encourage the top manufacturers to supply other teams with a customer spec Moto GP bike, the alternative is that CRT's may one day compete with factory GP bikes and this would not be good for manufacturers. Perhaps this is the start of that process?
Come on HONDA....PLEASE give me something to loosen the grip I have on my Perfect RRY....after the boring let down that the RR4 FireBlade was. I was ready to chop my RRY in for one on launch, thankfully I rode one first. And please don't let it be an oil burner like the latest ones either!!!!!!!
The RRY is the worst blade model IMHO (although I haven't ridden every single model year, but nearly). Are you really going to trade in your RRY for a £30k (ish) bike then?
Probably we talking about 50.000 GBP for a bike which is street modified. They talking about 2014, years after BMW introduced the S1000RR with all the "Gadgets". In 2014 BMW and probably all the others big brands will have something special to sell. So, we will see what happens.
Very interesting and thank you for sharing. I tried to look at the link but its asking for a EPiserver4 log in and password! Tried via the MCN web site but just got the same thing.
Y2blade, I've got a 2010 and it don't use any oil!!! And it's the best blade I've ridden! But your right, each to there own.
I'm in hope that they actually build a V4 fireblade and not an all singing all dancing MotoGP bike for the road. If/When that ever happens, I'm in that queue to sign up for 1.
My 2010 doesnt burn a drop of oil - oh we are here again - and is an awesome machine. as said before I don't think they will replace the blade, there is a huge Market for entry level IL4 1000cc superbikes which a v4 / v5 will never be. But personally if they done a spec'd up v4 exotic bike - much like a modern rc30 and it was high end duke / rsv4 factory money and looked like mrb's pic above - I'd sell my soul to the devil and buy one tomorrow. 40k!?!? No way....
i have no doubt there will be 1000's of potential buyers for a 20k bike, me included but there will only be a handful of people willing to part with 40k. Honda have the chance to put one of the greatest ever bikes into production at a reasonable price. We can just hope they do
My only hope would be is that they loose the cyclops headlight!! Although I think we might all be dreaming - not sure it'll happen
If they make a rep it would be just that a rep of the RCV, like Ducati did with LC's GP6 desmo, I would be gutted if they did coz I can never afford 40k plus for a bike and I'm too selfish to sell my collection... But it would be awsome! Anyway they have been saying that since the NR and RCs......but who knows they made those!
I resent that remark! The RRY was a great bike, if slightly underpowered compared to the litre bikes of it's time. Bit of tweeking here and there, upgraded forks, Ohlins shock, custom mapped. Would still keep up with any new bike in the real world today.
