Was surfing YouTube earlier and came across this gem of a video. Although it's a bit lengthy, I thought it was a fantastic walk through the history of the VFR and worth sharing....
Nice video. He seems to have missed the VFR800x model (Cross Runner) although he did mention its bigger brother the VFR1200x (Cross Tourer). I am not sure if the Cross Runner was ever released in the North American market - which may explain why. Certainly in Europe and South Africa - the Cross Runner has seen fairly decent sales - reflecting the growing market appetite for "Adventure" style bikes - and indeed offering a more affordable competitor to the BMW GS. At the end of the video the comment about 8th Gen models being dropped from the catelog is not entirely correct. The main reason new models stopped shipping was twofold. In 2015-16 the Kumamoto factory where all the larger Honda motorcycles were manufactured in batches, was coming to the end of a huge run of VFR800 standard and deluxe models for the North American market when in mid April 2016 it was pretty much destroyed along with most of the VFR production tooling by two massive earthquakes. As Honda had a huge inventory of 800s in stock, and with only a tiny fraction of the factory vaguely fit for use, they understandably focused their attention on restarting the most in demand and profitable models. But for that earthquake, there is no reason to suppose further VFR800s would not be churned out when the market needed further inventory. However production of their updated Fireblade which was due to be launched understandably took precedence, whilst the rest of the factory had to be pretty much levelled and completely rebuilt to a far more earthquake proof construction standard - something which inevitably was going to take years not months. That is the real reason why there has been a break in the availability of new build 800s. The factory is now rebuilt and there are credible rumours that a new RVF1000R model is currently in development.
