Soichiro Honda built an empire on the simple slogan: "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." To this day the perception that a Honda motorcycle should be all things to all riders pervades the corporate culture and it wasn't until many years after the founder went to motorcycle heaven that Honda revealed its first bike designed purely for being naughty.
The original 898cc FireBlade rattled a lot of cages when it was released in 1992. It was smaller and lighter than a CBR600F with almost as much power as the opposition's litre-class road-burners. It also had a temperamental gearbox and a 16" front wheel that gave it interesting handling but hooligans the world over loved it and made it a best seller.
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Since then, in an attempt to stay with Yamaha's R1 and, more recently, Suzuki's GSX-R1000, Honda's hot four has been updated to 918 and then 929cc. It also gained a pricey but very effective titanium exhaust collector valve that smoothed out the power band and a 17" front wheel that cured the worst of its wayward handling.
This year its motor has been bored out by another 1mm to increase swept volume by 25cc to 954cc. The compression ratio has been increased from 11.3 to 11.5:1 and now the engine, Honda says, kicks out 111kW at 12 250rpm and more torque throughout the rev range.
Honda claims 111kW at 12 250rpm for the 2002 Blade. The cosmetic changes are slight but immediately noticeable, particularly the more aggressive new nosepiece and headlight housing, and two tail lights have been mounted one above the other. The seat and tailpiece have been slimmed down and the new bike has a full undertray. There are gaps where earlier models had side covers and the black-coated alloy frame is almost completely exposed by lighter, fined-down panels.
The seating position is not as radical as it looks and the pilot's seat is a little more padded and has more room on which to move around.
Even with a 17" front wheel, the FireBlade is responsive almost to a fault.
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