Horsepower

[Rocky_imp]

There's no rational answer to your question, postoak. Humans—mostly men, I fear—have always had a bit of a yen for the biggest and the fastest. We are attracted top the bright, shiny things. Why, if you live in the city, would you buy a Porsche or an Aston Martin or a Ferrari or a Mustang or a Corvette or a CBR1000R or a ... you get the idea.

I think the answer is 'because you can' and because you want to say something like 'look what I can have'. It's also our way of replacing the brightly coloured feathers that Mother Nature denied us.

Before all the owners of these fine machines jump down my throat and tell me I'm maligning them, I accept, I do, that many people who acquire them do so because they have a genuine interest in motor cars or cycles and really enjoy the thrill of owning and using quality machines. It's fair enough. Good on you, but none of us belongs to a homogenous group.

I'm not sure that it is, as Mr Spock would have it, 'logical'. You don't need the horsepower; you don't need the speed; you don't need to support the petrol consumption; blah, blah, blah. But these high performance things are there, so people want them.

Why would you want a CB1100? It's probably bigger and heavier and more powerful that anyone really needs. My answer is that it's beautiful and I could have one so I did. Do I 'need' it? Not really.

I couldn't have said it better.
I already had (and have) a four-cylinder Honda that is both lighter and has more power than the 1100. I didn't "need it", but "it's beautiful and I could have one so I did."
That pretty well sums it up for me.