These 5 Killers Ended The 600cc Supersport Class Forever

Kiss your Yamaha R6’s and CBR600RR’s goodbye.

Picture this. It’s 2006. You walk into a motorcycle dealership. The showroom floor is covered in a sea of Yamaha R6s, CBR600RRs, GSX-Rs, and Ninja ZX-6Rs. 14,000 RPM race-bred rocket ships you could ride off the lot for less than the price of a used Civic.

Today? That entire class is effectively extinct.

It’s not just a north American phenomenon. In the UK, by 2017, sales of 600cc supersports were just 9% of what they used to be in 2006. Why did the greatest generation of sportbikes just vanish? Were they just going to be a passing trend, or were these bikes systematically hunted down and killed by the industry itself?

I’m Adrian. I’ve worked in the motorcycle industry for over 15 years, been riding for almost 20. These are the 5 killers that took the 600cc supersport class from us.

KILLER #1 – EMISSIONS

All right. First up — emissions. Specifically, the Euro 5 regulations that landed like a ton of bricks in 2020.

To understand why this hit 600cc bikes harder than anything else on the market, we need to think about how 600cc supersport engines actually work.

To make 120 horsepower from a relatively small 600cc engine, you have to rev it up to like 14,000 RPM.

To move enough air and fuel to do that, engineers use aggressive valve overlap, that, for a split second, has the intake and exhaust valves open at exactly the same time. That means unburned fuel gets sucked in, and shot right out the exhaust. Which we know Greta hates us for.

To clean this process up enough, to get the 600cc supersports up to Euro 5 compliance, manufacturers like the Japanese Big 4, Ducati, Triumph, and KTM, all had to add massive catalytic converters and exhausts, expensive ride-by-wire throttle systems, a bunch of sensors and tech… Basically they had to spend 1000cc superbike R&D money, on 600cc sportbikes that would sell for a lot less.

It’s like trying to make a Formula One engine run on Prius emission standards, while operating on grocery-store profit margins. Manufacturers could barely afford to keep making these things.

KILLER #2 – COLLAPSING SALES

To be totally honest, emissions stuff alone wouldn’t have killed the class. But then came killer number two: collapsing sales.

The 2008 financial crisis hit the motorcycle industry like a freight train. Supersports, maybe more than any other category of motorcycle, are expensive toys, and when the economy tanks, the toys sink first.

In the UK alone, sales of 600cc models dropped 91% in the decade after 2006. I’m repeating that from the intro because that’s not a normal market correction, that is a mass extinction level event. I first started working in the motorcycle industry in the tail end of that 2008 recession, around 2011, and let me tell you, even then, things were still bleak all around.

I want to paint a picture for you to really show how crazy this was: Right now, the Japanese brands haven’t updated their cruiser line ups for 15 to 20 years. We have babies who were born, grew up, got their licenses, went to college, graduated, started their careers and became adults, who have never been alive for an update to the Suzuki Boulevard line-up.

But back then, it was normal, for the Japanese manufacturers, to update their 600cc bikes, sometimes as often as every two years, because everyone was trying to be number one, and everyone was willing to burn millions and millions of dollars in development to make the next generation of supersport better than the rest, as quickly as possible.

But when the buyer pool shrinks to just a puddle in the span of a decade, how do you justify spending millions to keep on redeveloping your 600cc supersport every few years? You don’t.

KILLER #3 – DEMOGRAPHICS

How old do you think the average motorcyclist is today? 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s?

In 1985, the median age of a motorcycle rider was 27. BUT, by 2018, the median motorcyclist was 50 years old.

When you think of a 50 year old, finishing paying off that mortgage, looking forward to retirement, do you picture that guy all crouched up in the fetal position on a supersport to enjoy a nice relaxing Sunday ride?

Or do you picture him on an upright, comfortable machine like an adventure BMW GS, or a modern classic Triumph Bonneville?

Let’s be honest here, by the time we’re 33, we aren’t doing the crazy shit we used to do 10 years ago. And that’s why killer number three is aging demographics.

The supersport was built for a specific rider profile — young, aggressive, physical. Those riders didn’t disappear, they just started buying up adventure and retro motorcycles left and right.

So what about the next generation of new, young riders?

KILLER #4 – INSURANCE

This one I was around to see firsthand.

At one point, supersports had four times higher crash rates compared to cruisers, for riders under 25.

Annual premiums for young riders on these bikes shot up to fifteen hundred, sometimes twenty-five hundred dollars a year. People were, and in a few cases still are, paying almost as much in insurance each year, as what their entire clapped out used 600 cost them.

I’ve had some young and dumb customers try to get around this by insuring their 600s for a month just to get an insurance slip, and then cancel the policy… but not having insurance where I live comes with a $5,000 ticket if you get caught… and yes, some people will choose to take their chances running from the cops, but if you’re under 25 do you really have enough years of riding experience for that to be a good choice?

An entire generation of riders were priced out of ever getting into supersports, and for many of the ones left who were still willing and able to pay and get on their R6, GSXR, Ninja, or CBR 600s, there was still one last killer to face.

Side-note

First though, if you appreciate good, no fluff, no BS motorcycle content, don’t support those faceless, AI-generated channels, support real motorcyclists by hitting the like button, that’s all I ask and it helps a lot! All right, last killer.

KILLER #5 – A2 LICENSING

The final nail in the coffin was driven overseas. Killer number five: Europe’s A2 licensing laws.

Europe’s A2 licensing rules were born in 2013 and limit newly licensed riders to bikes making 47 horsepower or less, to protect them for their first two years of riding. It’s not the worst idea, so fair enough, and manufacturers started offering “A2-compliant” versions of the same motorcycles, that were tuned down from factory, to 47 horsepower or less. Totally fair, and, totally legal.

But the Europeans also did something that seemed to almost specifically target the 600cc supersports. By law, if a motorcycle originally made over 95 horsepower, manufacturers were not allowed to legally restrict a bike down to 47 horsepower. Why make this rule to begin with, and, was that number chosen at random, or was it chosen knowing that most 600cc supersports made about 120 horsepower at this time?

Either way, overnight, the entire class became legally inaccessible to every new motorcyclist in Europe for the last 13 years.

Now, those European teenagers and even newly licensed adults, who grew up with people like Valentino Rossi as their heroes if they were cool, or Marky Mark as their hero if they were little douchebags, they were still going to ride. They just bought up bikes like the Yamaha MT-07s. Parallel twins. Bikes with broad, punchy, low-end torque instead of screaming four cylinder peak horsepower machines of their heroes.

If the law says you literally can’t ride the bike your heroes rode, do you wait years to get one, or do you just fall in love with something else? By the time they were licensed long enough to ride whatever they wanted, their tastes had been reprogrammed by the government, and the in-line four was no longer desirable.

The skeptic in might be thinking, “okay, but this is a European problem. I thought this was America!” The thing is, European sales volume are so huge, that they impact a manufacturer’s global decisions. If Yamaha can’t sell enough R6s in Europe, they’re not funding R6 development for North America either.

THE INDUSTRY INSIDER TAKE

I like to include a relevant fun fact in all of my videos, so, fun fact: the USA represents about 1% of the total global volume of motorcycles sold. Europe is around 5-10% of all motorcycles sold. And of course, Asia, is 80-95%.

I should mention, there are some weird zombie holdovers. You can still buy an R6, but only as a track bike, because it’s been replaced by, what many people consider, the inferior twin cylinder Yamaha R7.

And that goes with the general “less is more” trend that we’re seeing in this part of the market. Even brands like Ducati making changes in direction to offer a Panigale V2 rather than only their traditional Panigale V4.

Manufacturers are dropping the 14,000 rpm rev limits on the screaming inline fours, are giving up on peak horsepower, and instead are giving us broad, punchy, usable torque.

And honestly the new middleweights are more fun in the twisties, give more margin for error when things get sketchy, aren’t going to destroy our banks with insurance costs, and are just better machines for real life motorcycle riding.

The 600cc supersport is now closer to extinction than the panda bear. But honestly, what replaced it is a lot closer to what most of us actually needed. Still though, variety is nice to have, and now it’s lacking.

Let’s talk

What do you think? Should we bring back the screaming inline four 600cc supersport, or leave those in the past? Are the 1,000cc supersports going to be next?

Drop me a comment, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Subscribe if you want more no-BS motorcycle content, and ride safe, but have fun. Peace!