If you don't think our Ducatis are a bargain, check this out!

Everyone always talks about engineering exercises and how much a company can learn from creating Halo products which trickle down technology into more accessible products, with the 1199SL and the new 2015R being a perfect example. Not too long into the future a bike half the price emerges with most of the tech, plus additional tech, and is arguably as good/better. Successful exercise.

But that doesn't apply here with this bike. Because this bike already exists. It's already race proven. Everyone already knows its legacy. Honda don't have anything to learn here from de-tuning it slightly, making it homologated and slapping a price tag on it that's unachievable.

However making it H2/1229S/R1M money, releasing it to the public with a proper warranty, servicing schedule that allows it to be rideable (not 4000km piston changes like they announced 6 months ago) and producing a few thousand of them, gives them an opportunity to nail a coffin in the sportsbike market place once and for all and make a statement to the world that people won't forget for a long time.

I think there should be outrage and Honda should be booo'ed for anything less. We know they are capable of it, just comes down to if they care about about the consumers to give them what they want or not. I don't think they do. I think all they care about is money and making low cost bikes in mass quantities to appeal to the type that buy the cheapest bike on the market at the time.

Grayson said:

It's a joke. 150,000 for a motorcycle, no problem.

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There are many riders that would look at us spending 19K+, and think the same thing

300,000 jr bacon cheeseburgers

well, it's only $180,000, it comes with a warranty although service intervals will be "different"....and in the US it's limited to 8000rpm, 101hp, 66lb/ft torque. Race kit (which voids the warranty) which yields "over 215hp" not available in the US.

Not interested in the least. I wouldn't pay $20k for such a bike. The way Marquez has been riding lately doesn't really add to the reputation of Honda's MotoGP design, at least as of late.

And (for those who have heard it in real life), the Honda MotoGP bike sounds godawful. Like the volume of a straight pipe Harley, but at the high pitched frequency of fingernails on a chalkboard. Completely different from the magical sounds that emanate from the Desmosedicis and Yamaha M1s.

Just look at the costs of normal bikes for some. My colleagues across the bridge in Denmark have to pay 98,000 USD for a Panigale R.
I guess folk will always find a way if they really want something.

shakazulu12 said:

I still think that Honda is vaporware. Whole lot of "if's, maybe, possibly" in all the interviews since they finally took the covers off it. I just think it was a way to stay in the news since they haven't done anything major with their sportbikes since the first iPhone came out.

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Stoner rode it around the track on Sunday.

101hp for the US version is a tough sell though. For $180k it's a bit of a laugh isn't it?