Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1536228
CNIIARCHIVES P130 HONDA'S BY KENT TAYLOR GOOD, BUT NOT GREAT The Scrambler CL450 was an iconic motorcycle for Honda, despite being an average-performing motorcycle at best. "T here are a lot of mediocre people…they are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?" Longtime U.S. Sena - tor Roman Hruska spoke those words in the very mediocre year of 1970 (the highest-grossing movie that year was a sapsucker called Love Story, and a top-selling car was the Ford Torino) in defense of a Richard Nixon appointment to the United States Supreme Court. The appointee was a judge named Harold Carswell, whose dismal record as a jurist had resulted in another senator labeling Carswell as "a mediocre judge…at best." Hruska (from Nebraska, so it was like "Husker" but inside out) came to Carswell's defense, but the pitch to make America mediocre again failed to excite his colleagues, and he fell short of garnering the necessary votes to put Carswell on the bench. As it is with people, there are also a lot of mediocre motor- cycles in this world—and in the June 12, 1973 issue, Cycle News gave readers a couple of pages about the Honda CL450 Scram - bler, a machine that was deemed worthy of a fistful of meh. It started, it ran, it sort of stopped, turned and blinked, even with a turn signal gone flaccid. Make no bones about it; the Honda was an okay motorcycle. But being okay in 1973 really wasn't good enough, especially for the thrill-seeking motojournal - ists of the day. There were plenty of good street bikes, lots of good dirt bikes and some respectable enduro machines, so why would anybody still want something called a Scrambler? This wasn't 1965, after all, and the hot sun had set on the day of the desert sled. Who wants a twin-cylinder street bike, especially one that is pretending to be something else? "A CL450 is just like a CB450," CN wrote, "only less sophisticat - ed. It has high pipes that make it a 400-pound-plus dirt bike. Dirt bikes can't have disc brakes, so the CL has a drum up front…add some cross-braced handlebars and you've about covered the dif - ferences. "Nobody, but almost nobody, thinks the CL450 is a dirt bike," CN added. It cannot be said that the crew didn't give the Honda every oppor - tunity to impress them. The staff kept the motorcycle for an unbe- lievably long stretch of two months, and they logged a couple of thou- sand miles on the machine. During that time, the 450 exhibited some markedly un-Honda-like traits, spe- cifically in the area of reliability. The battery would not hold a charge, and the machine occasionally would start to "make a new noise," though the staff didn't elaborate on said offense. It vibrated, but not so greatly as to annoy the rider, other than at highway speeds, "and then, only sometimes." What really irked the staff was an apparent cost-saving decision SCRAMBLER