The Accidental Sport-Tourist

The Accidental Sport-Tourist

UP FRONT

David Edwards

IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT THE SIMPLE PURchase of a used motorcycle makes front-page news, but there I was on the cover of the Knoxville News Sentinel, “above the fold” as they say in the newspaper biz. The headline blared, “Bye-Bye to Beloved Bike,” and was slugged, “Magazine editor buys Knox man's motorcycle.”

Slow news town, Knoxville, Tennessee?

Not really. When longtime CWreader Steven Smith heard it through the (electronic) grapevine that 1 was looking for a pearl-white 1982 CBX sport-tourer, last of Honda's mighty inline-Sixes, he sent me an e-mail with attached photos of his clean 5500-mile ex§ ample, just serviced and wearing fresh Avons, available at a fair price. The bike’s location 2000 miles away, normally a deterrent, was no problem; I’d be coming to Knoxville in a few weeks for the Honda Hoot and my friends at the factory had space on a westbound semi after the event. Planets in line, deal done.

Turns out Smith, a plastic surgeon, plays golf with the local newspaper’s publisher, and off-handedly mentioned the sale. In need of Hoot-related fodder for each day’s edition during the rally, the publisher sensed a story. When I showed up at Smith’s home to take delivery of the CBX, so too did a reporter and photographer.

“So, what makes this bike so special?” the writer wanted to know.

To find out requires time-traveling back to 1977. Honda, which had shocked the two-wheeled world with its blockbuster CB750 Four in 1969, wasn’t exactly knocking ’em dead with exciting new streetbike models. The single-cam 750 was still around largely unaltered, likewise the CB550 and 450. And the CB/CL360, follow-on to the prolific series of 350 Twins, was the internal combustion equivalent of vanilla pudding.

In October of that year, Cycle magazine was given exclusive access to a machine that would change everything. As audacious as it was outrageous, the CBX left the editors wide-eyed and slack-jawed. “It is difficult for us to retain the calm all journalists aspire to," they wrote of their first look at the pre-production bike. It had six cylinders all in a row, double overhead cams, 24 valves, six carburetors and a jackshaftdriven ignition and alternator mounted behind the cylinder block, allowing a case width only 2 inches more than the CB750. Packing I047cc, it put out 103 crankshaft horsepower and dispatched the quarter-mile in 11.55 seconds. Nothing on two wheels was quicker.

“The objective-to build the fastest production motorcycle for sale anywhere in the world-has been met. The bike is more than fast; it is magic. The exploding glitter of its technical credentials lights up the sky,” gushed the editors.

Chiefly responsible for those credentials was 37-year-old Shoichiro Irimajiri, CBX project leader, a man who ironically got off to a shaky start at Honda in 1963, the ink on his engineering degree from Tokyo University barely dry.

“Upon joining the company, the first blueprints I drew up were for the crankcase of the RC146, a 125cc four-cylinder racing engine,” Irimajiri told the International CBX Owners Association in 1990. “When the first casting was made, the Casting Division called me over to look at it. When I got there, there were a lot of very grimlooking people standing around the casting of the cylinder block I had designed. I got the shock of my life when I examined it and found that due to a design error I had made, the cover wouldn’t fit with the gears in place.

“Fortunately, some of the more experienced men told me how I could correct it, and we were back on schedule within two weeks. But when the founder of the company, Mr. Honda, said, ‘These college grads are great on theory, but not many of them are very useful,’ his words went very, very deep.”

Irimajiri more than made up for his mistake. A year later he penned the RC115, an eight-valve, 21,000-rpm 50cc Twin. In 1965 came the RC147, a five-cylinder 125, and then the seminal 250cc RC 165-six cylinders all in a row, double overhead camshafts, 24 valves, six carburetors. All won Grand Prix world championships.

In the Honda way, young race engineers are moved to mainstream production vehicles, in Irimajiri’s case the CVCC Civic automobile and the humble Hawk 400 commuter bike. But when the company needed a shot-in-the-arm superbike, he was ready with basically an upsized version of his RC 165 GP motor. In fact, Irimajiri developed two liter-class roadsters, the CBX and a conventional inline-Four that was lighter and more nimble than the Six. When time came to choose between the two, though, it was Irimajiri’s enthusiast heart that ruled over his engineer’s head.

“There was something exhilarating and exciting about the six-cylinder CBX that was lacking in the four-cylinder CB1000F,” he explained. “The deep rumble of the exhaust, the feeling of acceleration, its smooth, high-rev engine-something in the CBX that could not be measured in numbers made it a very sexy machine.”

And so was born the 1978 Honda CBX Six.

“It is taut, solid, together and distinctly European in flavor. Nothing about the bike is clumsy or strident. There are no significant loose ends; it is uncompromised and utterly self-assured-and it is the most exotic, charismatic motorcycle we have ever tested,” said Cycle. “History will rank it with those rare and precious motorcycles which will never, ever be forgotten.”

In the heyday of the Universal Japanese Motorcycle, then, an anti-UJM and the first of the true Japanese exotics.