New CBR250RR lightweight supersports bike

Honda officially launches the new CBR250RR lightweight supersports bike

Thus a freshly designed parallel twin engine, which Honda says it's managed to engineer into the width of a typical 250 cc single cylinder engine. The team has taken a bunch of measures to keep things compact, hiding primary gears inside the cam chain, pulling the water and oil pumps into the design as integrated parts, and placing the engine breather chamber in behind the cylinder.

That engine is operated by the first fly-by-wire throttle in the 250 cc class, which gives the RR a set of selectable riding modes. I'm not sure why you'd need to tame the brutal power of a quarter-liter engine with a softer throttle map, but … you can.

Suspension in not by Öhlins, as previous reports suggested – instead it's a cheaper and more cheerful Pro-Link shock and Showa forks.

That's about as much detail as Honda has released at this stage. We'll have to wait to find out the horsepower, torque and weight figures that will tell us what this thing's really going to be like to ride.

But it's a fun-looking machine that, given Honda's reputation, will certainly do well in markets that appreciate smaller capacity machines.

Source: Honda Asia