H
onda's pretty late to the
game when it comes to the
street scrambler segment.
You could almost argue they ar-
rived right when the party wrapped
up, as we've seen all sorts of street
scrambler variants from manufac
-
turers like Ducati, Yamaha, Tri-
umph and more for many years.
But it's better to be late than
never arrive, and we've now got the
$6799 SCL500 to play with.
The SCL gives the corporate
doff of the cap to Honda's 250cc
CL72 and 350cc CL77 models of
the early 1960s. Dave Ekins and
Bill Robertson rode CL72s from
Tijuana to La Paz in 1962, barely
three years after American Honda
was incorporated in 1959, showing
Americans just what this young
company called Honda could do.
That ride formed the basis of what
we now know as the Baja 1000,
and six years later, in 1968, Larry
Berquist and Gary Preston won the
second official Baja 1000 race on
a CL350.
QUICKSPIN I 2023 Honda SCL500
P94
BY RENNIE SCAYSBROOK I PHOTOGRAPHY
The SCL500 flanks
the bike that inspired
it, the CL77. It's not
exactly a tribute but
not too far off.
WHAT'S
NEW
THE STREET SCRAMBLER
HONDA TREATMENT
