#cb650f

With the motorcycle industry collected in Cologne, Germany, for Intermot, Honda made the surprise decision to present its latest Neo Sports Café concept at a car show in France on the same day. Debuting at the 2018 Paris Motor Show, the CB650F-based concept follows in Honda’s new styling language for naked bikes established last year by the CB1000R, CB300R and CB125R.

Honda has teased another Neo Sports Café motorcycle on its social media channels, with many speculating it will be a new CB650R model featuring the company’s current retro-modern styling for naked bikes.

On the surface, the 2017 Honda CBR650F and its naked sibling the CB650F don’t look much different than their 2016 versions apart from their new graphic schemes. The overall visual design, including their oh-s0-sexy cascading header pipes are back, and the underslung silencer has only a slightly different shape. Underneath the familiar skin, however, are a few updates that further refine Honda’s two 650 models.

Honda is dipping its toe in the suddenly trendy scrambler waters, introducing a concept model based off of its CB650F and CBR650F platform. The CB Six50 Concept, like the CB4 roadster concept, is a design exercise from Honda R&D Europe presented at EICMA.

Honda revealed a couple of concepts based on its 650 models at the 2015 EICMA show. Pictured here is the CB4, a naked roadster, which was joined by the CB Six50 scrambler. No official information was released, as they appear to be a simply design exercises from Honda R&D Europe and unlikely to develop into a production model (but we can hope!).

In my role as a moto-journo, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to ride all the latest and greatest motorcycles from around the world. It’s a great gig if you can get it, but there’s one tiny caveat: there are plenty of bikes not sold to us Yanks in the U.S. of A. The manufacturers have a number of reasons why they don’t sell certain bikes here, but the end result is, despite the unique position I’m in to ride a variety of motorcycles, there are still some bikes I long to throw a leg over. All because I live in America.