page_title: Sport bike
section_title: Variations
hierarchical_section_title: Sport bike / Classes / Variations
caption_attribution_description: Twisties
context_page_description: A sportbike, or sports bike, is a motorcycle optimized for speed, acceleration, braking, and cornering on paved roads, typically at the expense of comfort and fuel economy by comparison with other motorcycles. Soichiro Honda wrote in the owner's manual of the 1959 Honda CB92 Benly Super Sport that, "Primarily, essentials of the motorcycle consists in the speed and the thrill," while Cycle World's Kevin Cameron says that, "A sportbike is a motorcycle whose enjoyment consists mainly from its ability to perform on all types of paved highway – its cornering ability, its handling, its thrilling acceleration and braking power, even its speed."
  Motorcycles are versatile and may be put to many uses as the rider sees fit. In the past there were few if any specialized types of motorcycles, but the number of types and sub-types has proliferated, particularly in the period since the 1950s. The introduction of the Honda CB750 in 1969 marked a dramatic increase in the power and speed of practical and affordable sport bikes available to the general public.
context_section_description: Sport touring motorcycles share many features of sport bikes, but they are generally considered a class all their own. These are mid- to large-sized motorcycles that offer more carrying capacity, more relaxed ergonomics, and more versatility than specialized sport bikes, while being lighter and more agile than touring motorcycles.
  Some sport bikes are marketed as race replicas, implying that the model sold to the public is identical to the one used in racing, or at least is closer to the racing version than non-replica models. Suffixes R or RR applied to model codes can be interpreted as standing for replica or race replica. Race Replica was used in the late 1970s UK where 250 cc models customized with full bodykits providing race-styling in factory team colors themed to the top-level of sponsored riders of the time were available marketed towards 'learner' riders who had not passed a driving test enabling their progression to large-capacity machines. In 1982  Yamaha described their 1983 RD350 YPVS launched at the Cologne motorcycle show as "the nearest thing to a road going racer ever produced".
  The term race replica was then also used to distinguish the period of sport bike production from Japan and Europe since the mid-1980s having integrated race-styled bodywork, representing an evolution from the superbike period that began in 1969. The sport bike, or race replica, era began with the 1983 Suzuki RG250 Gamma, the 1984 Honda VF750F and the 1985 Suzuki GSX-R750, and had full fairings. Sport bikes with small or no fairings have proliferated since the mid-1990s. These are called naked bikes or streetfighters, and they retain many of the performance features of other sport bikes, but besides abbreviated bodywork, they give the rider a more upright posture by using, for example, higher handlebars instead of clip ons. The streetfighter name, associated with motorcycle stunt riding and perhaps hooliganism on public roads, can imply higher performance than the sometimes more tame naked bike, which in some cases is a synonym for a standard motorcycle. Others define naked bikes as equal in power and performance to sport bikes, merely absent the bodywork.
  
  The same period that saw the naked and streetfighter variants of the sport bike theme also had a resurgence of the versatile standard in response to demand for a return of the Universal Japanese Motorcycle. Supermoto-style street bikes, constructed with a completely different set of priorities than a road racing style sport bike, have also entered the mainstream, offering another option for riders seeking a spirited riding experience. The nickname muscle bike has been applied to sport bikes that give engine output a disproportionate priority over braking, handling or aerodynamics, harking back to the Japanese superbikes of the 1970s. A similar sensibility drives the so-called power cruiser motorcycles, based on cruiser class machines but with horsepower numbers in league with superbikes.
caption: A BMW R1100RS sport-touring motorcycle.
exif: {}