Honda Patent Reveals Radical Superbike Plans

It’s 30 years since Honda turned the superbike establishment on its head with the launch of the CBR900RR Fireblade, but the firm’s era of dominance in the superbike segment is long in the past. Now a newly revealed patent shows how Honda may be planning to fight back with a convention-busting design targeting radical weight loss compared to the current crop of rivals.

The Fireblade changed the superbike world, ignoring racing capacity regulations to be a road-only bike that combined 1,000cc power levels with 750cc-class weight. It’s a combination that rivals soon followed, eventually leading to the disappearance of the 750 class altogether, and Honda has rarely topped the class since. The firm hasn’t taken a rider to a World Superbike title since 2007 or had a manufacturers’ championship win in the series since 1997 and the era of the RC45.

Related: 2021 Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP First Look

The new design, which has appeared in Japanese patent documents, is unusual in several ways. Not only does it opt for unusual construction and materials, but the patent itself is remarkably detailed—including descriptions and drawings of the radical chassis as well as ancillary parts like the instruments, mirrors, bar controls, and even the sidestand and catalytic converter, parts that all confirm the design to be a road-going machine with production firmly in mind rather than a racer or a mere concept bike.

The frame is the main departure from the norm. Rather than the usual aluminum beam chassis, the transverse four-cylinder engine forms the main part of the structure. Although that’s not unusual in itself—bikes like the Ducati Panigale V4 and Aprilia RS 660 use partial frames with the engine as a main structural member, and the Fireblade itself featured a structural engine way back in 2000 when the CBR929RR version was introduced—the version shown in Honda’s new patent is more radical than most.

There is a front chassis section, described as being made of a “cast material” and hence probably alloy, which holds the steering head. It’s bolted to the engine cases, forming an inverted U shape over the cylinders and cylinder head, and like the Ducati Panigale 1199′s monocoque chassis, it incorporates the airbox and air cleaner. In the hollow front section of the frame, just behind the steering head, there’s a space (marked “110″ on the drawings) that’s filled with electronic components including the bike’s battery.

As well as the front frame section, there’s a pair of small, cast frame halves at the back (18), one bolted to each side of the transmission case and providing the swingarm pivot with additional strength. The swingarm itself appears to be a single-sided design, although that’s not explicitly spelled out in the patent’s text, while the document says the sidestand could be bolted either directly to the engine’s crankcase or to an extension of the rear frame section.

Where the bike really spears away from the norm is the seat unit and fuel tank, which are combined into one. The entire unit—marked “17″ on the drawings—is a one-piece carbon fiber component, bolted to the front frame section and self-supporting, with a monocoque design so the outer skin doubles as the structure. There’s no rear “bodywork” as such, just a seat on top of the subframe/fuel tank molding, with a rear light and license plate hanger extending from the back.

As such the bike’s bodywork is only at the front, and is made of four sections. There’s a nose—labeled “30″—along with two side panels (31) and a bellypan (32). The patent even goes as far as describing how the sidestand is set into the bellypan when retracted, a design that’s reminiscent of past Hondas including the NR750 and the NS400R.

There’s even more surprising detail in the drawings and descriptions of the instruments. The patent shows, and explicitly states, that there’s an analog tachometer on the left of the display, reading to 14,000 rpm, and the whole right-hand side (marked “50B” in the drawings) is a liquid-crystal multifunction readout for speed and other information. There are even detailed specifics about the clutch being hydraulic, with the reservoirs for the brake and clutch master cylinders being sculpted to suit the bike’s design. Yet more detail is on view in terms of the bike’s bar controls, with the left-hand pod featuring additional buttons, no doubt to give access to menus and settings on the dash.

All these details, along with the conventional-looking four-cylinder engine, which appears largely similar to the current Fireblade’s, and resolutely normal fork, brakes, and rear suspension, combine to hint that this bike is a more viable production prospect than the unusual chassis construction and styling might suggest. The patent makes clear that weight loss is the target, but also includes references to reducing manufacturing costs, which again hints that this is more than just an idle engineering exercise. Could Honda have plans to repeat the original Fireblade’s market-disrupting launch more than 30 years later?