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/949296
In the Beginning, ere was Bicycle... Honda Motorcycle 2018 Line up Honda's beginnings were almost as modest as Harley-Davidson's. Both started off with motorized bicycles in little shacks. The big difference is that Soichiro Honda had almost forty years of experience with cars and aircraft behind him when he started Honda in 1946. With a staff of a dozen men working in a 170 square foot building, Soichiro built and sold motorized bicycles using a stockpile of two-stroke 50cc Tohatsu radio generator engines left over from the war. Honda later copied the Tohatsu engines after that cache ran out. That was the Honda A-Type, aka the Bata Bata, nicknamed for the sound it made. The company grew rapidly and its first complete motorcycle, the D-Type, made its debut in 1949. Fifteen years later, Honda Motor Company had grown in leaps and bounds to be the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles. That's not too shabby for starting off with radio generators in a shack! Honda also gave the chopper world one of its most iconic motorcycle with the CB750. Bikers ran wild with the cheap platform, turning it into diggers and other chops all through the 1970s and into the 1980s. Only one other company has had more choppers based on its motorcycles than the CB750 has: Harley-Davidson. Honda has produced its share of other cruisers over the years as well, the most common ones these days being the Shadow Aero and Rebel series bikes. If you're into a reliable mid-size cruiser, the Shadow is the way to go, but if you want something smaller, the Rebel offers you that in two versions—300cc and 500cc. Just don't confuse this with the Honda Rebel of old. This one went through a serious redesign for 2017 and the new models are stripped-down motorcycles that look nothing like the old 450cc and 250cc machines they've replaced. They're not alone, however. Honda's Fury is the com- pany's take on a production chopper that's just a few flames and a set of fishtails shy of fooling the casual viewer into thinking it's a badass custom chopper (we old guys know better, but so what?). Honda's also given the motorcycle world its 1300 Custom cruisers. If they look familiar, that's because they borrow heavily from the Fury platform. Primarily in the motor department; like the Fury, the Stateline and Interstate 1300 Custom bikes have the same 1312cc, 52-degree, V-twin powerplant. All three are dif- ferent style flavors, though: chopper (Fury), pro street (Stateline), and bagger (Interstate). How's that for a company that started out making little motorized bicycles? 120 BUYERS GUIDE CYCLE NEWS CRUISER BUYERS GUIDE