P112
RIDE REVIEW I 2024 HONDA CB650R & CBR650R
is shifting. Going up and down
through the gears, honing your
skills, making those perfect
shifts that keep the rhythm in
tune as you accelerate out of
a corner, up shifting as rpm
climbs and then downshifting
and blipping the throttle into the
next turn. Mastering the art of
having every limb of your body
perform a different action at the
same moment in time all while
concentrating on picking the
perfect line, watching for other
traffic, scanning the road for
debris, and watching for other
things that might kill you. Wait,
what? Think about how that all
sounds to someone who's never
ridden before. To an experi
-
Wing DCT model represents
almost
70 percent of total Gold
Wing sales. But for the Africa
Twin, the DCT model drops to
less than half.
So, DCT is good for some
riders, but it's certainly not the
end-all solution in every cat
-
egory. Remember I said that this
is "their"
dream? That's because
customers aren't beating the
door down for automatic mo
-
torcycles and never really have,
frankly.
For most of us, part of
the joy of riding a motorcycle
Finally in 2010, we received
Honda's DCT (Dual Clutch Trans-
mission), which first appeared
in the VFR1200F
and has since
been integrated into everything
from the Gold Wing to the
Africa Twin—and even a few of
its cruisers are equipped with
this very slick technology that
functions like a fully automatic
transmission. But don't use the
word automatic around Honda
reps, because they insist it's not
automatic but rather a tradi
-
tional transmission that simply
shifts for
you. Okay. Regardless
of how you describe it, sales of
the DCT models vary dramati
-
cally depending on the segment.
As
you might expect, the Gold
The 2024 Honda CB650R (left)
and CRB650R (right) are similar
motorcycles with distinctively
different looks.
