Honda may be about to kill off the CBR 600 RR

New Euro4 noise and emissions regulations may bring about the end of Honda's CBR 600 RR.

The new regualtions come into force on January 1 2017; after that date an icon of British biking may need to say goodbye to its sportier variant.

There's no official word from Honda just yet, but sources close to British publication MCN have stated that the RR will live on but there won't be a European replacement.

This wouldn't be a surprising move for Honda - the demand for sportsbikes has dropped in recent years and that's been noticeable not only on the roads but also in the sales figures. Not only that, a new 600cc model costs around the same to build as that for a 1000cc bike - it wouldn't make sense for Honda to spend so much money engineering a new Euro4 compliant bike for a market that's not interested anymore. 

MCN's contact was quoted: “It’s not been an easy decision to make for some at Honda because the CBR600 is a bike that has had a great deal of importance to the company over the years but the fact is this model isn’t selling in the numbers needed to make it viable for another model to be developed.

“The work needed to get this bike through Euro4 is expensive and there is a lot of detail work to be done to make the bike legal. In order to keep the character of the CBR600RR intact and keep it legal requires a lot more work than it first appears. This work adds weight, complexity and cost. The weight would then need to be removed from somewhere else and then the bike gets more expensive still.”

The RR variant of the bike may well be killed off, this may well bring a resurgence of the F variant. Time will tell, but either way it'll be sad to see a staple of the 600 supersport category disappearing from British roads.