If you look at Honda’s product line up, they pretty much have every volume sales segment filled with at least one motorcycle. There is one glaring exception, however, and that is the big-bore, v-twin cruiser market. Honda makes some nice 1100cc v-twin cruisers, but they don’t make a big-bore. Rumors indicate that is about to change, and change in an interesting way.
Remember Honda’s new theme? It’s “performance first”. There are rumors indicating that Honda is working on a big-bore, v-twin that puts out some real horsepower and torque. Did you ever ask yourself why 1000cc v-twin sportbikes can put out 110 horsepower at the rear wheel, and over 70 foot-pounds of torque (Honda’s RC51 puts out over 120 horsepower at the rear wheel), but 1600cc v-twin cruisers are lucky to make 60 rear wheel horsepower? I’ve asked myself that question a lot, and I never seem to have a satisfactory answer for myself (don’t worry, I’m not schizophrenic).
Honda clearly is developing a big-bore, v-twin cruiser. There is no way that Honda doesn’t want a big piece of this market, and, even by Honda’s standards, it has moved too slow to joint this market. But in order to produce a big seller, Honda will have to do more than provide “classic styling” (refer to my article dated ____________). Honda needs something different. Something like performance. Maybe horsepower and handling in a big-bore cruiser . . . now, that would be unusual, interesting and fun. It just might happen. We’ll keep you posted.
