The exciting thing about editorial columns is that they don’t have to conform to any single premise. More or less, it’s cerebral riffing that, for our purposes at a motorcycle magazine, sometimes meanders around the idea of, well, motorcycles. While riding home from an event the other night, it occurred to me that even though much of my time is spent communicating with marketing representatives from motorcycle manufacturers, I have quite a few questions about the origin of some names.
A manufacturer representative will occasionally spell things out for us in a neatly prepared presentation. For example, the newly announced 2025 Royal Enfield Bear 650 is a scrambler commemorating the brand’s victory at the legendary Big Bear Motorcycle Run in Southern California’s San Bernardino National Forest, piloted by racing legend Eddie Mulder when he was just 16 years old. That’s an interesting history factoid to tap into for a scrambler. Also, bears are generally big, powerful things that aren’t to be trifled with, regardless of how you interpret that word.
Plenty of brands simply look at the displacement and think, “All alright. We’ll just say what it is, and that’s good enough, I suppose.” If you’re asking me, it’s simple, tasteful, and unambiguous. Examples of that would be the Ducati 916 and its subsequent siblings. KTM enjoys a good displacement figure slapped on the side of their street bikes, but it usually includes a random word like Adventure, Duke, or RC alongside it. Still, a mildly versed motorcycling audience will know what the bike is and does reasonably quickly.
Naturally, that brings us to the various acronyms the big four Japanese manufacturers have enjoyed. CBR, GSX-R, YZF-R, and ZX-R all act as internal codes for each brand, signifying what we understand as their respective ranges of high-performance road motorcycles. So, we’ve got a form of classification and then a displacement assigned to it. In the case of Honda, I guess we can translate the CBR600RR as “City Bike Race 600 Race Replica.” Again, it’s simple and didactic if you know Big Red’s naming structures, which does remind me of tales about the “Fireblade” and our U.S. market, specifically.
That might be confusing for us American readers, as our Fireblade was simply known as the CBR900RR. Again, it’s quick, clean, and straightforward. However, many other major markets knew it as the CBR900RR Fireblade. It is not merely a name that includes internal codes, displacement, and market positioning. Still, it also reinforces the idea that this new sportbike will slash through the competition like a flaming sword, burning mightily with the power of a thousand suns! In fairness, I added the part about burning mightily with a thousand suns, and to my knowledge, no one at Honda has ever dramatically screamed “FIREBLADE!” atop a boardroom table. But it is heavily implied if you ask me.
The moniker was deployed off and on over the years but never came to American shores until recently. According to Honda employee lore, told ’round the campfire, American Honda marketing personnel felt that Fireblade wouldn’t translate well to a North American audience. We’re glad this grave mistake has been rectified because what self-respecting motorcyclist doesn’t like the idea of flaming swords? After all, most motorcyclists have barely matured beyond high school (myself included), which confuses me as to why anyone would think that me and the rest of my knuckle-dragging riding buddies wouldn’t enjoy this. We would. We do. We always will. Alas, I digress.
As much as we interact with marketing staff in this line of work, we’ve never been a curious fly-on-the-wall during development meetings. It makes the imagination run wild with what proposed fell victim to the chopping block and if any of them were actually good. Suzuki is another Japanese brand that enjoyed referencing swords for its bikes, which, again, is quite cool because violently cutting things and screaming while doing so is cool. Again, this is not explicitly said, but heavily implied.
On the other hand, Suzuki also has a Burgman scooter range that has a name inspired by paunchy, khaki-colored-slack-wearing accountants who feel that Tabasco sauce has quite the kick to it. Names are supposed to evoke an emotion and conjure up images related to the bike’s overall purpose, but they are ultimately somewhat arbitrary. I mean, most buyers would probably react better to a sportbike called the Yamaha YZF-R1M instead of the Yamaha Potato. For the record, the YZF-R1M is not a potato, and I am quite fond of the crossplane I4 engine, but you get the idea. Also, for the record, if it were called the “Potato,” that’d have pushed me over the edge to buy one for the sheer irony of it. Imagine getting passed by a spud?
What a sun-baked mind will ruminate on to pass the time is something that I’m not qualified to explain and won’t try to unfold the world’s mysteries in this column. Instead, when rapping on the tank at a stop light, think about your favorite bike names and what they mean to you or what they could mean.
