AGE NO BAR

HONDA C71

IT WAS ONE OF the most ordinary, everyday motorcycling scenes imaginable. I simply walked over to the red Honda twin for the first time, threw a leg over its seat, turned on the ignition, and fired up its 247-cc engine with a gentle swing at the kick-starter. Then I trod into gear with my left foot, let out the clutch and pulled away, confident that the bike would be smooth, reliable and wouldn’t leak a drop of oil.

Remarkable? Exceptional? No, not at all, even for an elderly, unrestored bike that normally lived under a dust-sheet, and had barely been ridden for years. Which simply goes to prove just how much the C71 and its successors have transformed motorcyclists’ expectations since Soichiro Honda began his mechanical revolution in the late 1950s.

I certainly would not have fancied my chances of firing up an unrestored British twin of similar age with my first kick, or of riding it far without finding oil leaking from somewhere around the engine. But somehow I never doubted that the old C71 would start easily and run much as Soichiro Honda had intended, despite having been built back in 1960. And, sure enough, it didn’t let me down.

Of course, it’s possible to exaggerate the quality and reliability with which Honda led the Japanese industry’s rise to dominance. Not all Honda bikes were brilliantly engineered. (Indeed, the firm would still be having occasional mechanical disasters, with models such as the VF750F, more than 20 years later.) It’s also true that this particular C71 actually has an electric starter, which its owner prefers not to use because the 6V battery is barely up to the job.

If the CB750 four, which was launched at the end of the 1960s, was Honda’s master-stroke, then the smaller twins that arrived a decade earlier were also hugely significant machines. They had strange names that bore little relation to their engine capacities. They were curiously styled, not particularly fast, and sold in small numbers outside Japan. But with their reliable engine and electrics, their indicators and electric starters, early Hondas led by the C71 heralded a new era for motorcycling.

Ironically, the C71 was introduced in the same year as another of Honda’s most important models, the C100 Super Cub. With its novel “step-thru” layout, large wheels and reliable 49-cc engine, the Super Cub was the machine that showed “you meet the nicest people on a Honda”, as the firm’s advertising memorably stated, and which did most to spark the firm’s huge expansion, particularly in America. But while the Super Cub was providing the sales volumes and much of the profit, it was the twin-cylinder C71 Dream that was showing the promise of much more exciting things.

Honda had launched their first-ever twin-cylinder roadster, the C70, a year earlier in 1957. The C71, which followed and became the first Honda twin seen in Europe when it was shown at the Amsterdam Show in 1959, copied the first twin’s angular and awkward styling, with an almost square headlamp lens, huge front mudguard and rectangular rear shock units. The name on the partly chromed tank was not Honda but Dream, which Soichiro had used ever since his firm’s first wholly built machine, the 98-cc Model D, just a decade earlier.

The C71 and its C70 predecessor were very different from that simple two-stroke single, and were inspired by German firm NSU’s fast and efficient Rennmax twin-cylinder racers, which Soichiro Honda had seen on a visit to Europe a few years earlier. Not that Honda’s powerplant

with their reliable engine and electrics, their indicators and electric starters, early Hondas led by the C71 heralded a new era for motorcycling

was as exotic as the DOHC Rennmax. The Japanese unit reached its 247-cc capacity via bore and stroke of 54 x 54 mm, and used chain drive to single overhead camshaft.

Unlike most of Honda’s later twins the C71 engine was a dry-sump design, with an oil tank in the place of the right side-panel. It had a horizontally split crankcase, four-speed gearbox, and produced a claimed 18 PS at 7,400 rpm. The electric starter was a new feature, for the C70 was kick-start only. Honda also produced a slightly sportier CS71 model, whose higher compression ratio and revised, high-level exhaust system gave a couple of extra horsepower. Similar twins of different capacities included the 125-cc C90, the 154-cc C95, and the 305-cc C75, plus a sportier CS76 version of the larger model.

If the C71’s engine was modern in its design, and especially in such features as the close mechanical tolerances that helped make it reliable, the chassis was not. The frame, front forks and swingarm were all made from pressed steel sections. Pressed steel had the advantage of being quick and inexpensive to produce, but was partly responsible for the Dream’s strange styling. The forks were short, leading-link units with spring and damper units inside the pressings. The rear shock units were rectangular in section and, along with the huge mud-guards, added to the distinctly old-fashioned appearance.

But if the look was slightly strange, there was nothing wrong with the Honda’s quality of construction, as the excellent condition of this unrestored machine confirmed. Honda’s reputation for road bike performance began a year or two after this bike’s arrival with one of its successors, the CB72, which had a more modern look plus slightly more power. Earlier Dream models such as this one were essentially luxurious commuter machines, designed more for comfort than for speed, as the tester from the UK publication, The Motor Cycle, confirmed in a report published in June 1960. “The Dream is a gentleman’s motor cycle as docile a twin as ever purred over the Mountain lap,” he wrote after borrowing the Honda while in the Isle of Man. “It is a model designed to provide true armchair motor cycling.”

This bike certainly felt soft and comfortable enough for comparisons with an armchair, but its engine characteristics didn’t encourage a lazy approach from the rider. The motor came to life with a rather low, flat sound from its twin pipes, sounding docile and inoffensive rather than the slightest bit aggressive. So when I went to pull away I was surprised to find that the little 247-cc engine liked to be revved and didn’t have a great deal of torque low down.