Coming Soon: A High-Revving Honda Four-Cylinder 400?

It appears we are ready to relive the 1980s all over again—Husqvarna just announced its new Heritage lineup of retro-flaired dirt bikes, and we also see that Honda is apparently looking to heat up the pocket rocket sportbike class with a new four-cylinder 400.

For months, maybe even years, there has been gossip that Honda was working on a new 400—and it’s about time. Honda currently lags behind Yamaha and Kawasaki in the entry-level sportbike realm; the CBR300 is not as up-to-date as the Yamaha R3 or Kawasaki Ninja 400, and it isn’t even offered in Canada. We do have the CBR500 here, but it’s more money than those machines.

And Honda doesn’t currently have anything to compete with the ZX-4RR, the four-cylinder sportbike that evolved from the ZX-25RR. Big Red’s CBR250RR did muscle-up to compete with Kawi’s machine when it first came out, but it’s no 400.

However, after a lot of gossip, hinting and predictions from the moto press, Honda does appear to be building a new CBR400RR, or something along those lines. The news comes from Motorcycle.com, where they’ve uncovered a trademark application for the name “CBR400R Four.” OK, maybe not an RR model, but you get the idea. They’re almost certainly not building another placid parallel twin and calling it a Four.

We expect the new CBR to be a high-revving sportbike like the ZX-25, and that it would be pitched as a direct competitor, making just under 60 hp.

This brings us back to the mid-1980s when bikes like the GSX-R400 and original Ninja 400 competed for sportbike buyers in overseas markets—not so much here in Canada, where two-stroke Yamahas dominated the small-bore sportbike market, but those smaller four-stroke four-cylinders did come in as well. Grey market versions are still around if you know where to look.

It also could bring us back to an era where there was hotly contested racing on small machines. We’ve already seen a big return to club-level racing with the Lightweight category in CSBK and other racing series, and this year we saw the introduction of the ZX-4RR spec series. Maybe in a couple of years Honda, and maybe even another manufacturer, can compete side-by-side with Kawasaki here, bringing new life into small-cc roadracing.