Priller
Well-known member
R6 was the most extreme example of the 600cc screamer sportbike class that grew through the late '90s, exploded in sales through the early 2000's, then similarly imploded due to a whole sequence of events. At its peak, the Japanese factories were all churning out new models every year or two, and made huge leaps in hp and handling in a very short period of time as each strove to outdo the others in sales and race wins. In chasing track prowess, the bikes became hilariously unsuited for typical street use, with brutal bum up/head down ergos and peaky motors that didn't do much until 9,000 rpm.
It started to fall apart with easy credit disappearing in 2008 in the US, followed by fast ICE-powered things becoming deeply uncool with lots of young people (the ones who mostly drove the market in the first place - see the credit thing), along with emissions regs that meant improving on high-revving, small displacement motors became almost impossible. Add spiraling insurance costs, again especially punitive for young people, and the segment pretty much died within a few years. They're still very popular as excellent value track bikes (niche market if ever there was one), and World SuperSport, the smaller class to Superbikes, still races them as there's no classification of bikes that has taken over with equivalently sized and competitive engines. A lot of the models hung around unchanged for years, with sales a fraction of what they were, until emissions regs killed them off for good.
There's no shame in not knowing. I couldn't name any of the HD alphabet soup model names to save my life, and struggle with a lot of the Beemer range. It's all what you're into. The R6 was iconic within a certain subset of motorcycling for what turned out to be a relatively brief period of time...
