Text: John M. Flores • Photography: Kevin Wing

For 2007, the 20th anniversary of the Honda Hurricane, Honda is dropping the venerable, street-focused CBR600F4i and returning to their "one 600cc sportbike for all occasions" formula.

The 2007 CBR600RR has been thoroughly redesigned to appeal to track addicts and roadrunners alike, and when Honda invited us to sample the new version at Barber Motorsports Park in late November, we enthusiastically accepted. Sitting there in the pits, the bike looks seriously track-ready, with paddock stands and tire warmers and the shiny trailers of Honda and Dunlop in the background, and all the tire and bike mechanics in the foreground.

As I admire the new bodywork and finely honed mechanical bits, something catches my eye: two tabs on each side of the underseat exhaust's mounting bracket. Little nubs of molded plastic, they may be the least attractive part of the motorcycle, but they speak to me. A tailpack can be bungeed to these tabs, potentially making the Honda a perfect partner for a long weekend (or short week) of apex hunting. Waddling out onto the rain-soaked track under the watchful eye of the proud Honda Japan engineers, I secretly wonder how this bike would perform on a mountain road.

In their relentless pursuit of weight reduction, mass-centralization, and performance, Honda's engineers have taken a hatchet to their beloved '06 model, cleaving huge chunks of metal and plastic from the chassis, motor, and bodywork. The result is a stunning 16-pound reduction in dry weight - and in an age where the loss of a handful of pounds is worthy of a press release, this is big news.

The 599cc motor has the same over-square 67mm x 42.5mm bore and stroke dimensions as before, but this is where the similarities end. Honda claims 3.7 pounds of weight reduction, with an impressive 27.5mm reduction in length. Other changes include single exhaust valve springs, lightweight forged-aluminum pistons, increased compression ratio, a lightweight magnesium head cover, and more.

The motor inhales through a revised ram-air intake that mimics the RC51, first seen in 2000 and since copied by other manufacturers. The higher-volume airbox occupies much of the space normally occupied by the fuel tank, which was placed closer to the bike's center of gravity to sharpen its reflexes. Downstream, spent gases are exhaled via a new underseat exhaust that features titanium internal baffles. Although they remain coy about claiming increased horsepower, Honda does point to an improved midrange and what they believe is class-leading power-to-weight ratio as hallmarks of this model.

(End of preview text.)