VOLUME ISSUE SEPTEMBER , P97
(Above) An easy
riding position
will mean you can
spend hours on
this thing and not
get tired. (Left)
It looks cool,
but we're not
sure how much
passengers are
going to love
that high-mount
exhaust.
Dirt bikes and, indeed, those that are
tuned to race Baja have come, err, quite
a long way since those heady days of
the CLs, and no one is expecting you to
take a SCL500 and go tearing down the
Baja coastline. But the SCL does have a
few design cues taken from Grandpa CL,
the most obvious being the high-mount
exhaust that, on this model, exits on the
right versus the CL's on the left.
The rest of the styling tribute from the
SCL to the CL is questionable, so we'll
move on to what makes this bike what it is.
The SCL uses the Rebel 500 as its base
with its 471cc parallel twin. Honda doesn't
give power figures for the SCL, but we've
seen dyno runs that have the Rebel sitting
around 41 horsepower at the wheel—not
a lot, I grant you—however, there's enough
go on tap to make new riders more than
happy and just enough to keep more
experienced riders engaged.
Mounted in a steel frame with the sub
-
frame attached, you get a non-adjustable
41mm fork and twin shocks at the rear for
suspension, plus a single-disc twin-piston
caliper for the front that admittedly leaves
a little to be desired in terms of braking
performance. On the plus side, the plastic
fork gaiters look retro cool, and the twin
