The Fireblade was the vision of the great Honda development engineer and test rider, Tadeo Baba. Baba-san came to Honda as a welder, and came to the attention of Soichiro Honda himself for his skills as a test rider. He grew into engineering bikes, not the usual university-trained path, but one that Mr. Honda himself could certainly appreciate. When the Fireblade first appeared, it pioneered the '1000cc motor in a 600cc chassis', before the R1 and certainly better engineered vs. the contemporary GSXR's of the time. And it was developed by Baba outside the usual HRC channel. Baba was SO into it he would sneak back into the production line at night and sign the inside of the fairings !
Any way, the current Fireblades owe much of their layout to the MGP RC211's, 12's, and 13's: As it has always been, Honda races to perfect and test new ideas for production pieces.
So Terry, here's this from the World Honda site, Happy Birthday !
http://world.honda.com/CBR1000RR/history/index.html J o e y
