Honda V4 E-Book

Greg Pullen

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 321

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The complete story of the legenday Honda V4 motorcycles and the four-stroke engine design that gave them the name. Including full production histories, comprehensive specification details and over 250 colour illustration, the book covers design and development of the first Honda V4, the oval piston NR500, and the VF road models from 1982-1988. Also covered: the iconic sport touring bikes, the VFR750, VFR800 and VFR1200F; the worldwide racing success for Honda Racing Corporation's RC30; the 1990 Pan European/ST1100, with its longitudinal V4 engine, and the 2002 ST1300; Honda V4s in MotoGP; details of the 2014 VFR800 and CTX1300 cruiser and finally, owners' experiences and insight from those who worked in the industry. Fully illustrated with 256 colour photographs and comprehensive specification details.

Leseprobe

HONDA V4

THE COMPLETE FOUR-STROKE STORY

Greg Pullen

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2014 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2014

© Greg Pullen 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 755 7

Photographic Acknowledgement

All photographs are courtesy of the Honda Motor Corporation unless otherwise stated.

DEDICATION

For FAMILY and FRIENDS.

CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

BUILDING A BANDWAGON – THEN JUMPING OFF IT

CHAPTER 2

LESSONS LEARNT THE HARD WAY

CHAPTER 3

THE FIRST V4 ROAD BIKES – UNRELIABILITY REVISITED

CHAPTER 4

THE VFR750F – THE RISE OF THE MACHINE

CHAPTER 5

RACE REPLICAS, RCs AND THE VFR800

CHAPTER 6

THOSE WHO ALSO SERVE: THE VFR800 AND V4s ON TOUR

CHAPTER 7

HONDA V4s IN MOTO GP

CHAPTER 8

NOW AND AGAIN – CURRENT AND FUTURE V4 ROAD BIKES

Index

INTRODUCTION

Soichiro Honda has always been a hero of mine, perhaps one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history, never mind motorcycling. To start a motorcycle company is impressive enough but to take it from a standing start to being the world’s largest manufacturer of powered two-wheelers in sixteen years is astonishing. By the time Soichiro died, Honda had 80,000 employees working in factories spread across forty countries and producing almost five million motorcycles a year. It is a breathtaking accomplishment, even if some of those motorcycles are hardly enthusiasts’ machines.

Soichiro Honda – the ‘Old Man’, as he was known almost from the Honda Motor Company’s foundation – did want to build motorcycles that would arouse passion in the enthusiasts. He believed that he would only achieve that by building machines that could beat the best that European manufacturers could offer on the world championship circuits of Europe. He was also keen to sell motorcycles with a strong link to his racers. As a result, even in the early years Hondas had overhead camshafts at a time when most manufacturers – the ones not still building two-strokes, at least – were happy with cheaper pushrods and overhead valves. When Honda first built a racing 250 four, the RC160 in 1959, it was inevitable that a four-cylinder road bike would follow. The fact that the CB750 was unveiled in Tokyo in October 1968, less than a decade after the RC160 appeared, is simply astounding.

I have a particular passion for Italian marques, especially Ducati – a firm established in the same year as Honda. However, like Soichiro, I never cared for two-strokes and love racing’s heritage, so, for as long as I could not afford a Ducati – let alone an MV Agusta four as campaigned by Phil Read – a Honda 400 Four had to do. I had three in all, the last one fitted with enough Yoshimura parts to chase down Japanese 750s, never mind British ones. For me, a tuned 400 Four was the affordable link to Phil Read racing at Clermont-Ferrand, aboard an RCB in the dead of night at the Bol d’Or, or black and white photographs of Mike Hailwood racing the RC181 500cc four-cylinder racer. In short, 400 Four fans dreamt of racing four-stroke, four-cylinder motorcycles. When MV Agusta gave up racing and Honda stepped into the void with promises of an ‘oval’-pistoned V4, some of us were almost overcome with excitement. We were briefly heartbroken when the resulting NR500 failed to win a world championship race, but the path on which it set Honda offered plenty of compensations. Honda’s decision to go racing four-stroke V4s, inspired by little more than the suggestions of a handful of people, might be seen as arrogance or madness, or both. For some, however, it was proof that Honda was run by enthusiasts, and it certainly led to some interesting motorcycles. The VF750F was the first modern sportsbike, offering racetrack styling, liquid-cooling and clever suspension: the VFR750F that followed it proved that bigger is not always better; while the RC30 simply rewrote the rules of production racing and TT history. Honda’s latest V4, the CTX1300, might even rewrite the rules on what makes a fine cruiser, and is certainly a refreshing change of direction in a market sector that usually slavishly follows Harley-Davidson.

In researching and writing this story of Honda’s V4s I am indebted to a number of people. First and foremost is Gerald Davison, who worked at Honda from 1968 until 1983. He joined from Chrysler, ostensibly to grow Honda’s car business, but his passion for the firm’s motorcycles rather took over. He certainly is proof that there were some astonishingly enthusiastic people within Honda, and he also worked hard in a wider arena to improve motorcycling and motorcycle sport for everyone. He was the first non-Japanese to sit on a Honda board and was instrumental in guiding Honda towards the establishment of the Honda Racing Corporation. It is no coincidence that the colours of the legendary HRC are the red, white and blue of the Union Flag – HRC actually grew out of Honda Britain’s racing efforts, and naturally Gerald Davison ran his team in patriotic livery. At the same time, he also developed into something of a fan and expert on the Orient, as well as motorcycles. Without Gerald’s help, insights and phenomenal memory this book would have been impossible. He offers a very special perspective on the VFR1200F.

Pat Slinn also deserves a mention. He is more famous as a mechanic during Mike Hailwood’s and Tony Rutter’s world championships for Ducati, but he also, like his father, worked in the experimental department at BSA and so saw Honda’s power from the other side of the fence.

Ivar de Gier, also more famous as a historian of Italian and American motorcycles, helped with important aspects of the NR500 story, which starts the history of Honda’s V4. Thanks must also go to those who encouraged me, especially my wife Joanna. I am similarly indebted to the owners of Honda V4s who offered their experiences and insights, most especially Bob Hartman, Alun White, Mykel Nicolaou and Dave Martin.

For the photographs I offer sincere thanks to Tom Hobbs at Honda for access to a fabulous archive, and to Bill Snelling of FoTTofinders, for examples from his incomparable collection of images captured at the Isle of Man TTs.

Finally, very special thanks go to Cook Neilson, editor of the US magazine Cycle at the time when this story began. Cook is as accomplished a wordsmith as pretty much anyone on the subject of motorcycles, along with his successor at Cycle, Phil Schilling. Cook and Phil were the people Honda most needed to impress, and Cook was kind enough to share his memories of how events unfolded.

Honda’s four-stroke V4 story is a remarkable tale that began in an era that was all the richer for a lack of focus groups and market research. Instead, priority was given to the gut instinct of a few talented individuals, although, of course, relying on gut instinct has its downsides, some of which led to the perceived failure of the NR500 and the problems with the first V4 road bikes. Today, the Honda brand is synonymous with building reliable V4 motorcycles, from the continent-crushing Pan European ST1300, via the iconic VFR sports tourers, to the 250bhp RCV213V MotoGP world championship winner of Marc Marquez. Its good reputation did not come about through chance or luck; it was deliberately forged along a long and often rocky path.

Founding father Soichiro Honda always wanted his motorcycles to be unique. When he expanded beyond his home market, it was deliberately with sporting four-stroke lightweights in the European racing tradition, rather than with two-strokes, as his compatriots were doing. As the superbike era dawned, Honda introduced a range of transverse inline four-cylinder road bikes to recall the success of its 1960s racing motorcycles. Subsequently, as other manufacturers chose to follow Honda’s lead with their own four-cylinder machines, at some point in the 1970s, Honda took the decision that they would be known instead for four-stroke V4s. Although other manufacturers flirted with the V4 layout, most motorcyclists associate V4s with Honda – whether it is the maligned and misunderstood NR500 grand prix racer, the corporate flag-waving 748cc NR-RC40, or the mouthwatering prospect of the promised RCV1000C, a road-legal version of the RC213V MotoGP bike. Just like the man whose name is written large across their fuel tanks, these Hondas are unique and exceptional, regardless of the divided opinions they sometime evoke. This is the story of the people, circumstances and engineering that created them.

Marc Marquez leads Dani Pedrosa on their V4 Honda RC213Vs at the Brno round of the 2013 MotoGP championship.

Honda V4 owners can be obsessive enough to want their bikes and associated paraphernalia in the house. GREG PULLEN

CHAPTER ONE

BUILDING A BANDWAGON – THEN JUMPING OFF IT

Soichiro Honda defied pigeonholing, and was certainly unlike the Westerner’s clichéd view of a Japanese man. He had a taste for Cadillac convertibles, red shirts and Geisha girls – apparently, combining all three was his idea of a good night out – and was an ambitious and original thinker. He left home at the age of 15 with no formal qualifications, after a school career that had not been helped by his forging the family stamp on school reports. Unaware of his lack of academic progress, his mother had allowed him to carry on tinkering and making things when he should, perhaps, have been devoting more time to his studies. After leaving school, young Honda-san moved away to spend six years as an apprentice at a garage in Tokyo, hanging on to the job because he was one of the few employees prepared to stay in Tokyo after an earthquake. By 1928, still just 22 years old, he had his own garage and by 1937 had started making piston rings for Toyota.

A Man of Conviction

After the war Soichiro Honda sold what remained of his business to Toyota, and set up his eponymous Motor Company, in 1948. Four years later, in 1952, he explained his motivation in an essay entitled ‘The Beauty and Artistry of Products’:

Although Japan’s machinery industries have fallen completely behind the west, I feel the calling to create motorcycles. More than anything else I want to create utterly beautiful forms that are in no way inferior to those produced in other countries… This means today’s best engineers must not only be excellent engineers, but also outstanding artists, combining both a scientist’s intellect and an artist’s sensitivity.

The publication of this text led to a string of designers knocking on Soichiro’s door wanting to work with him. Those who were taken on encountered a man of unshakeable convictions, as well as an artist’s temperament and a short fuse – incredibly, Soichiro was not above threatening his engineers with a raised spanner. He had an extraordinary self-belief, which pervaded the Motor Company and led to a conviction that Honda could achieve anything it set its mind to. However, in later years, it did not always work in Soichiro’s favour. In 1973, his refusal even to countenance liquid-cooling for Honda engines, even the Formula 1 cars, led to his retirement from the main board. (His opinion was that liquid-cooling merely hid a symptom rather than dealing with the underlying issues of an engine’s need to be cooled. It was an argument that might have merit during a debate on thermodynamics, but trying to provide a car stuck in traffic with efficient engine cooling and heating in the passenger compartment without using liquid is not easy. More importantly, a car’s engine, unlike a motorcycle’s, does not hang in a cooling breeze.)

As well as liquid-cooling, Soichiro had no time for twostroke engines, despite his first motorcycle – the 1949 DType – being a 98cc two-stroke. He firmly believed that the four-stroke layout was intrinsically superior. From the 1951 Dream E, with its overhead-valve 146cc single-cylinder engine, Honda’s motorcycles were four-strokes. Soichiro considered the layout to be more reliable, economical and, not least, better-sounding than that of the ubiquitous twostrokes. He might have been right, but the approach would hurt Honda during the 1970s, especially in racing. Although Soichiro Miyakoshi would prove that Honda could build fine two-strokes – which could win world championships, no less – his first effort, a 125 motocrosser initially raced in Japan without a manufacturer’s name on the tank, and the first Elsinore dirt bikes were the same: Honda was prepared to go that far to distance itself from two-strokes. That was in 1971 and, by the time the two-stroke Honda CR250M Elsinore was launched, in 1973 – quickly followed by a 125 version – Soichiro Honda’s enforced retirement was imminent.

The 1947 A-Type, Honda’s first complete motorcycle.

Although Honda – both the man and the main board – wanted to be associated exclusively with four-strokes in their target US market, their attempts to build four-stroke off-roaders were greeted with, at best, lukewarm reviews in US magazines. Dirt bikes represented an important market in the USA, both in terms of sales and profile, so, for the first time since the D-Type of 1949, Honda swallowed hard and built a two-stroke. That two-stroke, the Elsinore, would persuade the main board of the Honda Motor Company that pragmatism could sometimes be profit’s bedfellow. The Old Man (as Soichiro had been known almost from the beginning) felt differently and legend has it that, whenever he spotted the engine being tested, his associates would assure him that it was for a lawnmower, an area of Honda’s business in which he had no interest.

The Dream Team: Soichiro Honda (right) and Takeo Fujisawa around the time of their retirement, in 1973.

Kiyoshi Kawashima riding a Dream E-Type at the Suzuka Circuit on 1 April 1992. In July 1951, Kawashima had tested the Dream E-Type, having designed the engine, by riding it over Hakone mountain pass.

Something Soichiro did have an interest in was the European tradition of road racing, as well as a belief in the traditional European model of using racing success to sell motorcycles. In 1954 he had visited the Isle of Man TT races for the first time, an anonymous figure despite being the head of what was shortly to become the biggest motorcycle manufacturer in Japan. The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy was, at the time, undoubtedly the most important motorcycle race on the planet. Honda’s success thus far had been based entirely on selling small-capacity motorcycles to the home market, but Soichiro harboured ambitions to conquer the US and European markets. That would mean building motorcycles for the true enthusiast and the true enthusiast demanded racing success from his chosen marque; even Harley-Davidson understood that in their early days.

Takeo Fujisawa – Honda’s Brilliant Number Two

Although Soichiro could be single-minded – bloody-minded, even – he would happily take advice from Takeo Fujisawa, a friend he had met through his dealings with Toyota. Fujisawa was a natural salesman whose roots were in business rather than engineering. Honda quickly recognized that they complemented each other perfectly. While Honda was a natural engineer who aggressively introduced mass production to his new company – even ensuring that the production line ran down the slope at the site of his factory, allowing it to operate more quickly – he appreciated that he was no salesman and lacked big business experience. Some say that it was Fujisawa who persuaded Honda to stop building two-strokes and switch to four-strokes, simply because they had a different exhaust note from the predominantly two-stroke competition. It is a nice story, but those who experienced Soichiro’s dislike of two-strokes personally would find it hard to believe.

Coincidentally, Fujisawa was also looking to invest in a business, so after joining Honda in 1949 he quickly became Soichiro’s trusted ally. He was appointed Honda’s vicepresident in 1964, and retired at the same time as Soichiro, in 1973 – their relationship was that close. On Honda’s first visit to Europe, in 1954, Fujisawa was not especially interested in the TT races that occupied Soichiro’s thoughts. He preferred to visit mainland Europe so that they could study how the motorcycle market was evolving. Fujisawa realized that businesses could not rely indefinitely on the post-war economic boom that was being enjoyed by much of the world. Instead, he believed that a business had to grow its market, both in terms of new products and the countries it sold to. He observed in Europe that people first acquired a bicycle, then bought a clip-on engine for it such as Ducati’s Cucciolo, before moving on to a scooter, in the hope that they could eventually afford a car. A similar path was followed in the USA, and motorcycle factories seemed happy to offer lightweight motorcycles, accepting that they would quickly lose their customers to the car manufacturers. This was fine in a world with a growing population and increasingly affluent members of society, and where new customers were easy to come by, but it did rely upon perpetual growth.

The best-selling motor vehicle to date – the Honda Super Cub. This is the original 1958 C100, one of the first of the 50 million Honda built.

By contrast, the motorcycle enthusiast was considered to belong to a separate market, requiring high-performance, large-capacity motorcycles with a sporting heritage: they were seen as being closer to adventure sportsmen, quite unconnected to the buyers of commuter bikes. The idea that the buyer of a small-capacity motorcycle might be turned into a motorcycle enthusiast with a loyalty to a brand, buying ever-bigger motorcycles from the same factory, was a new one. In Fujisawa’s mind, the latest Honda – the 1956 Honda Super Cub, or C100 – was not simply a commuter’s scooter. The Super Cub, Fujisawa believed, should be the buyer’s first step into the Honda brand.

The CS71 Dream. Honda included the ‘Dream’ title in most home-market model names – including the CB750 Four – but only occasionally used the designation for export models. Early styling was clearly influenced by NSU, although the red seats might have been Soichiro’s decision – certainly, he loved to wear red shirts.

The Isle of Man TT Dream

By now Honda was also developing the 250 and 305 Dreams, their first steps into the ‘real’ motorcycle market and the first time they had attempted to produce engines that gave over 10bhp. Honda was borrowing heavily, notably from the US Government, which was keen to see Japan remain capitalist, rather than follow most of the Far East into Communism. With a ready pile of American cash Honda set about investing in mass production. In order to repay those loans Honda would need to sell a lot of motorcycles to a lot of people. Fujisawa’s strategy was to have owners trade up to increasingly large motorcycles, each with the name ‘Honda’ proudly emblazed across the fuel tank. Soichiro Honda understood this concept, but also understood that the inspiration for a motorcycle enthusiast was different from that of an economy-minded commuter. An enthusiast expected his tank badge to be shared with racing motorcycles, ideally ones that had succeeded in the Isle of Man TT races.

That first visit to the Isle of Man shocked Honda. Even the shorter Clypse course, a 10.79-mile(17.36-km) course used for the first time in 1954 to allow lightweights and sidecars to compete at speed, was far more challenging than Soichiro had expected. The 37-plus-mile mountain course used by the bigger bikes was simply staggering. The European racing bikes were also far more advanced than anything Soichiro had imagined. Before leaving Japan Honda had issued a public declaration stating that they would enter the TT, either with the 220cc or 250cc Dream, or by building 100PS per litre racing engines. (‘PS’ is an obsolete power measure in Europe, replaced by Kw, but used widely by Japanese engineers; it stands for Pferdestärke – German for ‘horsepower’ – and nuances in definition mean 1bhp is 0.986PS.)

If commentators are to be believed, 1954’s victorious German NSUs produced almost 19bhp in 125 form and, oddly, more than double that as a 250. In other words, they were producing well over 150PS per litre: Soichiro Honda’s thoughts of competing with his new 220cc Dream – making all of 10bhp – were dashed. He would have to increase his racing engine’s target by over 50 per cent. The punishing Isle of Man courses would also require far more robust motorcycles than Honda had envisaged if they were to survive a TT race.

In an interview for the book Honda F-1 1964–1968 (Nigensha Publishing), Soichiro recalled his reaction to his first experience of European road racing:

It was when I first went to see the Isle of Man TT Races in 1954. What amazed me was seeing machines running with about three times greater power than we had been considering. From Italy, Germany and England, they all came together to the Isle of Man and I watched them shoot off like arrows. Not only were these machines unlike any we’d ever seen before, we’d never even dreamed of such a sight. When I went and saw that, my first reaction was a shock of disappointment. I had gone there after spreading talk all over Japan about how Honda would enter the TT races, so this was a terrible shock to me. What did I say, I wondered, and what am I going to do? Then I pulled myself together and took another look. After a good night’s sleep, I went back and looked at the racecourse again the next morning. Then it came to me. These people here have a history, and that’s why they can make machines like these. We don’t have that history, but we’ve seen these machines, and that can have the same effect for us as history.

It says something about Soichiro’s ambition that he continued his tour of Europe, but suddenly it was more than just market research. In England he bought Avon racing tyres and Renold chain, and by the time he arrived in Rome for his flight home virtually all his belongings had been abandoned and his suitcases were instead crammed with Borrani wheel rims, Dell’Orto carburettors, and more.

A CB72 Dream from 1960. Soichiro Honda had originally hoped to race tuned versions of his production road bikes at the TT, but when he visited the Isle of Man he soon realized they would be hopelessly underpowered compared with the purposebuilt European racing motorcycles.

Honda was met at Tokyo airport by Fujisawa. He soon realized that his business had survived a cash-flow crisis and was safe in his good friend’s hands. He was confident that he could leave the day-to-day running of his company to Fujisawa, and chose to focus instead on a new secret camp developing Honda’s 125 TT racer, codenamed ‘RC141’. The TT Race Headquarters were established in October 1954, with a young engineer named Kiyoshi Kawashima leading the team. Perhaps inspired by the NSU’s Rennmax 250 layout, although the two engines had little else in common, Kawashima and Honda built a125cc engine with two valves feeding each of its twin cylinders, rather than mimicking the single-cylinder layout favoured by the Italians. In theory, this would allow more engine revolutions and, therefore, produce more power. According to Kawashima’s calculations, they would have 18PS at the crankshaft in time for the 1959 TT – enough, he felt, to be competitive. Soichiro was not so sure, and was less than happy when his racing motorcycles were beaten in Japan, where he knew they should be dominating if they were to have any chance of succeeding in Europe.

175cc version of the Mondial racer so admired by Soichiro Honda. Famed Ducati designer Fabio Taglioni worked on the design, which won the 1954 Moto Giro road race. After being missed off the guest list for the celebration party he left Mondial for Ducati.GREG PULLEN

The Mondial Connection

The Fratelli Boselli (FB) Mondial motorcycle company was a genuine phenomenon when it first started racing in 1948, with its brand-new dohc 125cc machine setting acceleration and sprint records straight off the drawing board. While the motorcycle division of FB Mondial was new, the Boselli family had roots in the Italian motorcycle industry which reached back to the 1920s, when Giuseppe Boselli was a partner and racer for the GD marque. In 1929 Giuseppe convinced his brothers (his fratelli) to start a company (Fratelli Boselli, or FB), making commercial three-wheelers. Although the venture was a success, the factory was destroyed in the war. Despite this, by 1946 the factory had resumed production.

In the mean time Alfredo Drusiani, son of GD’s old engine builder, was designing a dohc 125 racing engine that revived Giuseppe Boselli’s racing ambitions. He purchased the prototype engine and then worked alongside the young Drusiani to develop a complete motorcycle that would become the blueprint for FB Mondial’s racing success.

Kawashima and Soichiro Honda admired the Italian Mondial racers above all others; they displayed a delicate beauty and peerless speed that seemed almost at odds with their sturdy reliability. In 1957 Mondial secured the first three places in the 250cc championship with the British rider Cecil Sandford winning, Italian Tarquinio Provini coming in as runner-up and Irishman Sammy Miller completing the clean sweep. Provini also took the 125cc title. Following this extraordinary success, Mondial delivered a bombshell to the racing community, announcing their withdrawal from grand prix racing, along with all the other Italian manufacturers, at the end of 1957. Although MV Agusta infamously had a change of heart, Mondial would never return to racing. Seeing an opportunity, Soichiro wrote to the Boselli brothers asking if he might purchase one of their obsolete125 engines.

Honda’s first Isle of Man TT, 1959. Left to right: riders Junzo Suzuki and Giichi Suzuki; team leader Kiyoshi Kawashima; riders Naomi Taniguchi, Teisuke Tanaka and Bill Hunt; mechanics H. Sekiguchi and S. Hirota. The team rode the 125cc RC142 on the Clypse Course, with Naomi, Giichi and Teisuke finishing sixth, seventh and eighth respectively. Junzo was 11th with Bill retiring from the race. Kawashima would succeed Soichiro Honda as CEO.

Mondial agreed to supply Honda with an engine, much to everyone’s surprise, especially Kawashima’s when he first tested the engines on a dynamometer. Dynamometers measure an engine’s output at the rear sprocket (or, more often today, at the rear tyre), thus reflecting power losses between the crankshaft and drivetrain: this, along with the fact that the Honda engine was a work in progress, explains the difference between the 18PS quoted earlier for the RC141 and Kawashima’s results. As Kawashima recalled for a Honda historian many years later, ‘The Mondial gave 16.5PS, and our engine just 15.3 – and the Mondial was a three-year-old design!’ He immediately set about redesigning his engine. It was dubbed the RC142 and featured an eight-valve head above twin cylinders, creating a blueprint for pretty much all future racing Hondas: double overhead cams, multi-cylinder layouts and four valves per cylinder. Without the Boselli brothers’ generosity things might have turned out very differently.

Honda’s gratitude to Mondial is the reason why one of the first motorcycles on display in Honda’s museum at Motegi, Japan, is a Mondial 125. When Roberto Ziletti unveiled a new limited-edition superbike bearing the Mondial name in 2002 Honda agreed to supply SP-1 V-twin engines, a unique act of support for another manufacturer. Even today, Honda recognizes that, without that 125 Mondial engine, its early racing history – and even its history as a motorcycle manufacturer – would have been very different. The RC142 might have had two cylinders rather than the Mondial’s one but, despite carrying the Honda name, in many ways the RC142 was closer to Mondial’s thinking than to Honda’s.

The summer of 1959 might have left Soichiro Honda with his happiest memories for his old age. Despite his Japanese riders never having visited the Isle of Man before, their achievements were remarkable. Finishing sixth, seventh, eighth and eleventh secured Honda the 125cc Manufacturer’s Cup, its first international racing prize in its first international race. Although it was 1961 before Honda returned to the TT, this time they had secured the services of one of motorcycle racing’s greats, Mike Hailwood. He ran away with the Ultra Lightweight title on a 125cc Honda, before taking a second TT victory later the same day in the Lightweight race on another Honda, this time a 250. Hailwood went on to win the 250 world championship in 1961 for Honda, on the incredible four-cylinder racer that was referred to within Honda as the RC161.

Naomi Taniguchi and his RC142 on their way to sixth place in Honda’s first-ever world championship race.

The 1959 TT again. Left to right: riders Junzo Suzuki and Giichi Suzuki; team leader Kiyoshi Kawashima; manager Yoshitaka Iida; mechanic Shunji Hirota; rider Teisuke Tanaka; chief of maintenance Hisakazu Sekiguchi; and rider Naomi Taniguchi.

Honda would never win the ultimate prize, the 500 road racing world championship, during its early years on the world motorsport stage. This was down to a handful of factors, some within Honda’s control, some definitely not. While they had Mike Hailwood, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the 500 handled poorly: Hailwood reputedly once threw the rear shock absorbers of his bike away so that Honda would have to allow him to replace them with British Girling units. The other major fly in the ointment was MV Agusta and Giacomo Agostini, who were a slick race-winning partnership. Based in northern Italy, they were geographically far closer to the European circuits that made up the ‘world’ championship than Honda was. Yet by the time Honda decided to withdraw from racing, in 1967, there was no doubt that the Honda name was firmly established in the minds of motorcycle enthusiasts around the world. Honda had proved they had first-class engineers who were capable of building fast, reliable multi-cylinder engines.

The incomparable Mike Hailwood aboard the inline four-cylinder 500cc RC181 in 1967.

Conquering the USA with Superbikes

Soichiro Honda once noted that ‘there is no point fishing in an empty pond’. Honda’s efforts to fill that pond included an innovative and highly successful advertising campaign in the USA. The marketing tagline ‘You meet the nicest people on a Honda’ was backed up by investment in racing and dealerships in the territory, and spoke of an ambition within Honda that was lacking just about everywhere else in the motorcycle world. Honda was by now far and away the largest manufacturer of motorcycles in the world by volume, and ready to cash in on its racing success, with road bikes aimed squarely at the US enthusiast. The company had already had one stab at this with the CB450 in 1965; although that motorcycle had sold well enough in the target US market as well as in Japan, Honda wanted a bigger slice of the pie. Big-bike sales in the US were running at some 60,000 units a year, mainly to the advantage of British manufacturers. When Honda’s US sales fell in 1966, CB450 development team leader Yoshiro Harada was charged with visiting US dealers to discover the reason why.

Harada quickly learned that motorcycle enthusiasts are not rational creatures. The CB450 might be measurably better than a British 650 but, as the Americans were fond of saying, ‘there’s no substitute for cubes’. Harada learned that bragging rights often turned around numbers such as standing-start quarter-miles, cubic capacity and horsepower claims. Chastened, Harada returned to Japan with some basic ground rules for Honda’s new big bike: it needed a claimed 67bhp to beat the 66bhp that Harley-Davidson asserted for their 1300cc engine; knowing that Triumph was working on a 750cc triple, Harada determined that his new Honda must have 750 badges on the side panels; and, finally, he advised that the public’s admiration for Honda’s four-cylinder racers should be used as a marketing springboard, building a four-cylinder motorcycle for the road. In order to underline the connection, the new Honda would have the four exhausts and silencers that would leave no one in any doubt of its racetrack heritage.

The 1965 CB450, sold as a Dream in Japan but known as the Black Bomber in the UK, and the Hellcat in some markets. The odd styling, capacity and weight did not help sales.

The term ‘superbike’ had not yet been coined, although it would soon be needed. Four weeks after Triumph unveiled its 750 triple, as the Trident and near-identical BSA Rocket Three, Honda struck. The CB750 Four was launched at the 1968 Tokyo show, and blew apart the notion that Japan was a nation of copycats. The new four was so far ahead of anything else in terms of specification it might have come from another planet: and, in a way, it had. As Phil Schilling, one-time editor of Cycle – undoubtedly the 1970s’ most influential motorcycle magazine – wrote: ‘While everyone else in the motorcycle business asked, “Why not later?” Honda asked, “Why not now?”’

Honda was a fast learner – styling got updated for export based upon research rather than intuition. This 1970 US 450 mimics the ‘desert sled’ look loved at the time, and still works today.

Gerald Davison was with Honda UK from 1968 until 1985, gaining influence and control in every aspect of the firm’s business and becoming the only non-Japanese director in the process. Our first meeting was at his Somerset home, the changeable autumn weather on the drive down mirroring my feelings. Davison had a reputation for singlemindedness and had been careful to establish my motives before agreeing to speak. I need not have worried: I was met by an immaculate and charming gentleman of the old school; courteous, open and thoughtful. Antiques and books defined the sitting room, all signs of technology hidden away. Was this really the man who introduced four-cylinder motorcycling to the UK? He recalled those early days for me, when he was just 26, and previewing the most important motorcycle on earth for a disbelieving public and industry alike:

I remember the first CB750 arriving. Mr Honda understood it was about the product; he wasn’t typically Japanese, he was something of a maverick with no connections [to the traditional obligations] and a very flamboyant character – he liked to wear red shirts.

At this point, Gerald Davison grinned and shook his head, as if he still could not quite believe it.

There were perhaps fifty of us working in Power Road [the Chiswick headquarters in the UK, conveniently close to Heathrow airport], covering all aspects of the business. I was earning my money on the car side – I’d joined on the car side – but I always got my enjoyment and excitement with the bikes. I’d trained as an assessing engineer and every single bike that came in, came to me: within the office people said, ‘Send it to Davison, he’s the bike freak.’ I remember helping to uncrate the first CB750: we heard this great excitement and call to rush down to the workshop. We ripped apart the crate and quickly got it running; I stood a thrupenny bit [an old British coin with twelve straight sides, allowing it to stand edge on] on the tank and we stood there mesmerized with the smoothness of this thing: I think it was a gold one for the [1969 Earls Court] show. We knew then there’d be an endless supply of very, very good products.

Pat Slinn was also at that Earls Court show, as part of the BSA team showing off the Rocket Three. He had followed in his father’s footsteps, being apprenticed at the BSA/Triumph engineering group, and working his way up through the BSA research and development department. Although he loved his apprenticeship years, culminating with a mechanical engineering degree, by the late 1960s he could see the writing on the wall.

I remember seeing the new Honda at a show, up on its stand, and then looking at our triples leaking oil on to the carpet: and these were our show bikes! But the biggest sin was that you couldn’t buy them – there’d be rows of unfinished bikes at the factory, just waiting for something silly. Probably something like a footrest forging or a pawl for the gearbox, but it meant they couldn’t go out to the dealers.

John McGuiness relaxes on a replica of Mike Hailwood’s RC181 at the 2013 Classic TT. The four exhausts were something Honda was keen to echo on their new range of inline fours. GREG PULLEN

A very early Honda CB750 Four from 1969. Launched into a marketplace where overhead valve 650cc parallel twins were exotic, the new Honda changed motorcycling for ever.

The CB750’s gold paint scheme was the first one that UK motorcyclists saw at the 1969 Earl’s Court show.

Devastating the British Competition

British bikes had traditionally dominated world markets, a carry-over from the UK Government’s post-war ‘export or die’ policies. The US market was the Holy Grail, with motorcycle enthusiasts there seemingly easily satisfied: providing any new motorcycle was bigger and faster than last year’s, it would sell, and sell well. But there was a garden-shed approach to British motorcycle design, leading to ingenious development but little that was truly new. The 1968 Norton Commando might have been the first 750cc superbike, yet it was really just a bigger-capacity version of a twenty-year-old 500. There was still a pre-unit (separate) four-speed gearbox, overhead valves driven by pushrods, and drum brakes rather than the discs that were appearing on racing motorcycles and sports cars. There was also the inevitable parallel twin-cylinder engine’s curse of vibration. Although this was dealt with by rubber mounting the engine, the so-called ‘Isolastic’ system needed careful adjustment if smooth running was not to be at the expense of spoiled handling. Dressing up the new Norton was a strange ‘Fastback’ tail fairing that could not disguise what was clearly just a modestly updated design in comparison with the Honda, which reflected the company’s blue-sky thinking.

The CB750 Four (also called the ‘Dream’ in Japan) was new from the ground up, built on those US loans and a huge domestic and pan-Asian appetite for the smaller bikes that Honda did so well. The four-cylinder layout reminded buyers and admirers of Honda’s magnificent multi-cylindered racers that had battled with MV Agusta on the world stage. In addition, not only was the Honda cheaper than the Norton, it was a third of the price of its more obvious competitor, the MV Agusta 750 fours that arrived in 1971. Even so, these were wearing drum brakes rather than the Honda’s more modern (if less effective) front disc. After seeing the CB750 at the 1968 Tokyo show, the reporter of US magazine Cycle World was impressed: ‘Honda launches the ultimate weapon in oneupmanship, a magnificent, muscle-bound racer for the road.’