2021 Honda CBR600RR Preview

The 600cc supersport class was once the most hotly contested category among Japan’s Big Four, but Japanese insiders reckon the updated CBR600RR you see here will be the last of the line. A combination of changing fashions and ever-stricter emissions rules have been working to make the 600cc class less attractive to both customers and manufacturers. Getting a 600 four to run cleanly enough to suit international rules—particularly those in Europe, once the class’s biggest market—is an expensive business. Passing those costs onto customers makes the bikes less attractive, reducing sales and making it even more difficult to amortize the initial R&D investment. It’s a vicious circle that appears to be impossible to break.

The result is that, in Europe, the CBR600RR disappeared from dealers in 2017, a victim of Euro 4 emissions limits. However, Honda kept the bike in production for other markets, including the States, and has decided that a revamp—cleaning up emissions enough to keep the bike on the market in areas including Japan—is worth the cost.

At the moment Honda hasn’t released a lot of detail on the changes to the CBR600RR, but our Japanese sources say the 2021 model now meets those Euro 4 limits that saw it removed from sale in Europe. It’s too late for that continent, which has now moved on to even more strict Euro 5 regulations, but the change means the bike can return to its home market in Japan, which has emissions limits based on Euro 4 levels. Other countries like Australia are also expected to get the new bike, as well as North America, where the current generation CBR600RR is still available.

Cleaning up the engine has been achieved it seems largely through changes to the electronics. While there may be internal tweaks, it’s clear from the images released by Honda so far that important elements including the exhaust system are unchanged from the current model. The now rather unfashionable underseat pipe—a CBR600RR signature since the bike first gained the “RR” tag in 2003—remains. The seat unit itself and the taillight are also carried over.

In fact, the vast majority of the 2021 bike’s components are the same as the 2020 model. The frame, swingarm, fork, brakes, and wheels are identical, along with a host of smaller parts like footpegs, levers, and elements of the bodywork including the front fender. The main visible change is the fairing, which gets a CBR1000RR-R-inspired makeover, gaining wings on each side and headlights that squint like Clint Eastwood staring into the sunset.

Those changes alone might not be enough to open many customers’ wallets, but they’re backed up by a new suite of electronics that bring the CBR600RR into the 2020s at last. The addition of—to use Honda’s words—”all the latest electronic control technology” could be enough to bring new buyers into the fold. Our Japanese insiders say they include an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that’s tied into cornering ABS, Honda’s HSTC traction control system, multiple power modes, and a quickshifter. Honda’s own teaser video for the bike reveals a color TFT instrument panel (borrowed from the existing CBR1000RR) showing an unchanged, 15,000-rpm redline, a gear position indicator, and a mode section that reveals selectable P (power), T (traction control), W (wheelie control), and EB (engine-braking) settings. The bike’s bar controls will also be borrowed from the CBR1000RR to give a way to adjust all that new kit.

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The full reveal is due on August 21, when we’ll find out whether Honda has managed to clean up the CBR600RR’s act without losing power. Our insiders say the new bike makes around 115 hp, roughly on a par with Yamaha’s YZF-R6 but a fair bit less than the 128 hp offered by Kawasaki’s 636cc Ninja ZX-6R.