Honda VFR1200F: Review by Ashish Jha

Imagine the soft rays of the sun filling your windows as you wake up to realize the sheer beauty of tall, green trees swaying to a soft breeze, and charming white clouds in the sky that look like heaps of cotton, which you simply want to jump onto – a perfectly gorgeous day, in short. And the perfect way to spend it would be to take a really long ride on an all-consuming highway with mountain stretches to boot. Sounds absolutely brilliant, doesn’t it? Well, this was, in reality, the brief given to a 5-member team of designers (an American, a European, and three Japanese blokes) who were responsible for shaping the Honda VFR1200F.

The Honda VFR1200F is a sports-tourer, and I could never really understand that term properly. I’ve always been confused when it comes to this segment of motorcycles. I mean, how can a motorcycle be sporty and a tourer at the same time? It either has to be a cruiser like any of the Harley Davidson’s, or an outright super/sports-bike like the Yamaha R6. Imagine a bike being a cross between a Fatboy and the R6 – it’s just wrong! Get my point?

You see, it’s one thing to know the definitions exist on paper, but you need to experience the products firsthand to understand what makes them fall in their respective segments. As luck would have it, I always either got the chance to sample out-and-out super/sport-bikes, or some naked beauties of the two-wheeled mechanical kind. I never really got my bottom settled on a comfy, but quite serious, long-distances-made-easy sort of a bike like the Falco Peregrinus – oh, Suzuki calls it the Hayabusa for some strange reason.

To know how good the Honda VFR1200F is, click here…