#cb750

Honda officially revealed its new CB750 Hornet, a new middleweight naked claiming a class-leading power-to-weight ratio. Unfortunately, the new Hornet has only been confirmed for Europe thus far, with no indication of U.S. availability. Pricing varies from country to country, but they generally hover around US$7,800.

Honda‘s been teasing its new Hornet for several months now, first with a concept at EICMA, some design sketches in June, and more recently, details about its new Parallel-Twin engine. While we wait for Honda to officially reveal the the bike, we’ve managed to get further specifications for the 2023 Honda Hornet, thanks to vehicle certification data from Switzerland.

Terry Hopkins tells us the tale of “the orange bike” whose powerplant narrowly escaped a fate worse than death – slowly rotting away in a dark dank Florida shop corner – only then to be stuffed into an exhumed Honda CB frame. The resulting build is more impressive than you might think: 

Well, this is not The Honda Museum, which I suppose is in Japan somewhere. This one’s in Torrance, California, a short drive from American Honda’s sprawling U.S. corporate HQ in a discreet location. Unfortunately, this museum isn’t open to the public, but Honda does let people in for various corporate events, or if they’re important bigwigs. How I got in I’ll never know, but major thanks to Honda’s PR guy Tony De Franze for making it happen. It all started when he and Mike Snyder mentioned they’d found three RC45s still in their crates a couple months ago in back of a warehouse…

Honda’s homage to itself was a big hit for 2013 with all those fans who still can’t get enough of the original earth-shattering 1969 CB750, even though the bike picked up design influences from a few more CBs as it rolled along Memory Lane: 1100F-ish fuel tank shape, 400F-like right-side four-into-one pipe … In any case, its style definitely pushed a lot of the right buttons for vintage Honda enthusiasts.