This popular volume contains 48 articles including road test
reports on Honda's Super Sport, K2, K3, K5, K6, K7, F1, F2 and 960, from
such popular magazines as Cycle World, Motorcycle and Motorcycle
Mechanics. Plus articles on new model reports, performance data,
history, service notes, engine analysis, specs and tuning.
The Honda Motor Company was founded in 1948 in Japan by Soichiro
Honda who was the son of a blacksmith. He was the manufacturer of piston
rings and saw the opportunity to manufacture cheap powered bicycles for
a transport starved public. The piston ring company was sold and
bicycles fitted with a 50cc clip-on engine that ran on turpentine were
put into production by the new company. These motorised bicycles were a
great success, so the ambitious and forward thinking Soichiro began to
have ideas for even larger machines. During the 1950's, he produced a
variety of very good machines that were influenced by German technology,
and for the time, looked incredibly old fashioned. There was a good deal
of NSU ideology to be seen in the mid to late fifties products but by
1958 significant changes were taking place in Honda?s ultra modern
factories. The machines coming off the assembly lines were now more
advanced than many a European design and Soichiro Honda decided to go
motorcycle racing, in particular on the Isle of Man at the TT. During
the first part of the 1960?s, ultra modern roadsters of 50cc, 124cc,
250cc and 305cc were produced in huge numbers and exported all over the
world. A range of fabulous racing bikes of multicylinder configuration
were developed with the fours and sixes, with their in-line
across-the-frame layout, beating all the opposition and setting the
style for the roadsters of the future. A twin cylinder double overhead
camshaft twin called the CB450 Dragon appeared in 1965 hinting at racing
technology. It alarmed European manufacturers but it was rather
expensive and did not sell very well, much to their temporary relief.
The future truly arrived in 1968 at the Tokyo Motor Show when, after
some three years of speculation, Honda announced not a 500/4 as had been
expected, but a 750cc 4 cylinder model. The machine had the air-cooled
in-line across-the-frame engine layout that was to become a classic with
overhead camshaft and a hydraulically operated disc front brake. The
world gasped as this was the stuff of which racing bikes were made of
and yet it was affordable although not cheap. In twenty short years,
Soichiro Honda had not only moved on from antiquated mopeds to four
cylinder technological marvels, but had now written a new chapter in the
history of the motorcycle. From now on, motorcycling would never be the
same again and where Honda led, the rest of the world would follow. It
couldn?t afford not to. Models covered: Automatic, Super Sport, K2, K3,
K5, K6, K7, F1, F2 & 960.
