The Birth Of The Modern Sportbike
In the current issue of Cycle World, Kevin Cameron offers his version of the impact made by the 1983 Honda VF750 Interceptor. Cameron is well-placed to offer an historical treatise on the Interceptor. He, like myself, was a young motorcyclist at that place in history and felt the bombshell impact made by the introduction of the Honda V4's. Of course, he saw it from a professional tech geek’s perspective while my viewpoint was more sex appeal and the promise of speed and lean angles. Cameron even did a nine-page technical article alongside the road test in a 1982 issue of Cycle.
Today, Cameron declares the 1983 Interceptor the “first true sportbike.” His rationale is that this was the first time that the lessons learned from U.S. Superbike racing were applied to a production motorcycle. “Those lessons were that both engine and chassis must be designed to win Superbike races without the complete re-engineering needed in 1976-82.”
He also notes that Honda produced the bike as a homologation special without expectations of market success because no one thought that handling was important to sporty-bike buyers, only brute force and quarter-mile times. But here was a bike that did it better than anyone else — right off the showroom floor. In fact, factory race Interceptors (intentionally looking very much like the bikes at your local showroom) won the first six U.S. Superbike races in 1983. They didn’t get the championship that year but did the following five years. Beginning with the ’82 FWS 1000cc V4, its descendants would stretch through the range of VF models, generations of VFRs, the RC30 and RC45 racers and streetbikes, and, “yes, the V5 RC211V MotoGP and its V4 descendants ridden today by Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa. The sportbike was changed forever.”
In the current issue of Cycle World, Kevin Cameron offers his version of the impact made by the 1983 Honda VF750 Interceptor. Cameron is well-placed to offer an historical treatise on the Interceptor. He, like myself, was a young motorcyclist at that place in history and felt the bombshell impact made by the introduction of the Honda V4's. Of course, he saw it from a professional tech geek’s perspective while my viewpoint was more sex appeal and the promise of speed and lean angles. Cameron even did a nine-page technical article alongside the road test in a 1982 issue of Cycle.
Today, Cameron declares the 1983 Interceptor the “first true sportbike.” His rationale is that this was the first time that the lessons learned from U.S. Superbike racing were applied to a production motorcycle. “Those lessons were that both engine and chassis must be designed to win Superbike races without the complete re-engineering needed in 1976-82.”
He also notes that Honda produced the bike as a homologation special without expectations of market success because no one thought that handling was important to sporty-bike buyers, only brute force and quarter-mile times. But here was a bike that did it better than anyone else — right off the showroom floor. In fact, factory race Interceptors (intentionally looking very much like the bikes at your local showroom) won the first six U.S. Superbike races in 1983. They didn’t get the championship that year but did the following five years. Beginning with the ’82 FWS 1000cc V4, its descendants would stretch through the range of VF models, generations of VFRs, the RC30 and RC45 racers and streetbikes, and, “yes, the V5 RC211V MotoGP and its V4 descendants ridden today by Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa. The sportbike was changed forever.”
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