How far can litre bike development go?

[legzr1]

Mastodon2 said:

I must admit, I was surprised when I was looking at the power figures for the current 600s and saw them in the 125bhp range, that is incredible. I often wonder why sports bikes, in particular the 600 class, aren't more popular - I suppose adventure bikes are the "cool" thing these days. Some journos seem to cite a lack of technical innovation in the 600 class as the reason, in particular a failure to adopt the electronics packages of their big brothers, but even with current power levels, do they really need TC, anti-wheelie etc? I suspect not, though I've not done the market research, so who knows.

Probably because they're making 1 whole NM of torque at 10,000 rpm together with 21hp at 16,000 rpm - 125hp doesn't come until the second or third lap of the tacho.

[Tim85]

legzr1 said:

Probably because they're making 1 whole NM of torque at 10,000 rpm together with 21hp at 16,000 rpm - 125hp doesn't come until the second or third lap of the tacho.

ha this.


I don't really see many new 600s around. Obviously older carbd 600 are quite popular as they're usually decent first bikes and can be picked up for peanuts. But I suppose most people if either you have 7/8 grand spare or are willing to finance that much it's not too much of a hassle to get that extra couple of grand to get the top of the model range rather than the 600.
It's funny how we see what's popular or in ie if I go to a local bike cafe i can usually see one of every litre bike currently out with a load of gs/tigers inbetween. Yet when I was in lemans with thousands of bikes literally 90% were all naked style street bikes.

[Walter Sobchak]

I think surely bikes are getting close to that laws of physics point, no matter how good the electronics are, I can't see them being able to launch much quicker, saying that, you never know, the development of superbikes even in the last 10 years has been very noticeable.