Being over twice the age of your average college graduate, and a certifiable motorcycle nut to boot, I’ve had the advantage of being able to witness many years of the on-going evolution of the modern motorcycle. The one category where I’ve noted the biggest changes is the sport bike class. In the early-to-mid 70’s, the closest thing to a ‘sport’ bike was a regular street bike with a requisite café fairing and some low-cut handlebars. Snap on a set of aftermarket rear-sets and you had an instant racer-replica. Other than that, these bikes varied only slightly from their standard counterparts by way of maybe a more aggressive sprocket or a steering damper, but that was it. Compared to today’s machines, those bikes of 30 years ago seem downright barbaric. Motorcycles built today, and especially those in the sport bike category, benefit from a wealth of materials innovation, design advances, and technology improvements. The complexity and capabilities of these two-wheeled speedsters is nothing short of… well… rocket science!

     My goal in this article is to examine some key benefits and characteristics of today’s current crop of sport bikes. Specifically, I want to highlight the combination of horsepower, weight, and price currently available to those of us with the insatiable need for speed.

     One very notable improvement has been the ability of manufacturers to realize significant weight reductions through the use of special materials and innovative designs. To put this in perspective consider the following: A 1975 Honda CB750 tipped the scales at 479 lbs and the 2007 Interceptor (base model) comes in at 470 lbs (dry weight, non-ABS). Not much of a difference you might think, but then consider the Interceptor is fully faired while the vintage CB is basically the equivalent of today’s naked street bike. Next consider the Honda RC51, this 999cc monster clocks in at an amazingly svelte 439 lbs.!

     Significant performance gains, specifically horsepower, have been realized with race-proven technology developments. These performance improvements are finding their way into today’s street going sport bikes with greater frequency and are blurring the lines between track-only machines and their street legal counterparts. Since the main focus of this motorcycle segment is performance, I thought it would only be fitting to present some horsepower measurements for these bikes from the sources noted at the end of the article. Not all manufacturers are posting this bit of information, so some additional research is sometimes in order.