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Whacking Permalink Archive 25 October 2004 Black sheep: The championship-winning Honda that Honda doesn't like In 2000, thanks to the idiotic rules of the Superbike World Championship favouring twin-cylinder bikes, the management at Honda decided to hold their nose and give a giant "fuck you" to the Italians: by building their own V-twin and beating Ducati at their own game. On a competition level, it went gangbusters: the VTR-SP1 and SP2 won two out of the three SBK titles it contested, before Honda pulled the plug at the end of 2002 to focus on MotoGP. It also won the 2002 American Superbike Championship.
Yet commercially, the SP1/2 never set the world on fire. While Ducati's super-sexy (and expensive) 916/996 range felt like tamed racebikes, the Honda in street form was comparitively heavy, sluggish and overpriced. Privateer racers could buy the Ducati and have a machine that was almost race-ready. The Honda needed lots money and effort to be made into a racebike, which is why it never won races except with the support of the Honda Racing Corporation. Worse still, the SP was completely outpaced by its four-cylinder Honda stablemate, the Fireblade, which had more power, weighed 26kgs less and had superior road manners. Almost nobody who rode both machines preferred the SP2.... and the twin was $7000 more expensive. Too expensive to compete with the other Jap sportsbikes, too hardcore for the sports-touring market, too little prestige next to the Italians. Not that the bike didn't have it's fans. Like all Hondas, the SP is built like granite. Superb build quality, reliability and quality of finish. It was also a shitload more comfortable than its Italian rivals. And while it may have been overpriced compared to Jap four-cylinder machinery, it was still a hell of a lot cheaper than shelling out for a Ducati. And let's face it, for 95% of everyday road rides, the SP was a fast, booming v-twin that was a blast to ride. But unless you were willing to spend big bucks, the SP could only achive 8/10ths of what its competitors could when really pushed. Sure, you can upgrade the suspension and do some engine performance mods, but should the owner of a $21,000 motorcycle really have to do this just to bring it up to scratch? Honda stopped developing the bike after it won the 2002 SBK title. World Supers now allows 1000cc four-cylinder bikes, and even Chris Vermeulen's semi-factory rookie effort nearly stole the title from the factory Ducatis this year. So Honda have gone back to concentrate on what they're best at: supremely fast, affordable four-cylinder superbikes for the masses. There will be no SP3, and the only changes to have happened to the bike since then has been the paintwork. The sales figures are unlikely to have even covered the development costs. The existence of the SP bikes can be put down to one thing: pride. Honda's V4's weren't enough to beat Ducati under the superbike rules, so they built an overpriced V-Twin with limited commercial appeal, just so they could enter SBK and turn it into a title-winning machine. They succeeded that twice, then dropped the whole thing, mission accomplished. The
SP2 is still in production, but for how much longer? I don't know, but
I'll wager it's going to be the last japanese v-twin superbike we're going
to see for a long, long time.
Race gangster squeals against government Aboriginal commie activist Sam Watson is suffering an acute case of hyperbole over the federal election result:
"Forced removal" = taking a bunch of parasitic race-gangsters off the public payroll.
John Howard is to blame for oppressed peoples everywhere? The untouchables in Asia, the non-muslims in Muslim countries, the entire population of Cuba? Well,
I guess it was nice for the creepy commie to put 'final solution' in quotation
marks.
The world's most politcally-correct tyrant has some more friends down under with the "Australia-Cuba Friendship Society". I've been having fun with their online petition to stop the evil USA's cruel treatment of Castro's totalitarian shithole. You type your name in to the box at the bottom, and it gets added to the petition. In the spirit of solidarity with my pro-Castro communist brothers, I typed the following names into the box:
Please visit their page and add your "name" to the petition. It'll be fun. Well, it'll be more fun than reading the ACFS newsletter. It includes a report on Aledia Guevara, daughter of the fascist murdering thug Che Guevara:
Hmmm, let's have a look at Aledia's "humanity" shall we? After some heartwarming recollections of daddy and Uncle Fidel, we have this charming passage...
Nice
people, these communists.
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