Honda NC lets its hair down
Rides one of the ‘‘nicest’’ motorcycles on the market.
There are two street bikes currently residing in the garage that represent opposite sides of motorcycling’s psychological profile. One is the Aprilia Tuono 1100 Factory, a hotblooded Latin V4 so encouraging of a thorough flouting of traffic laws that riding it could be described as the nicest way to go to jail. The other is the bike you see on this page: the recentlyupgraded Honda NC750X.
Oh how they laughed at the bike powered by a twincylinder engine created by cutting the in-line four of a Honda Jazz hatchback in half when it first appeared back in 2012. How boring, how bland, how un-soulfully sensible was the nicest Honda ever made to attract the nicest people.
Buying an NC was initially considered to be the final victory of the head over the heart, and a surrendering of the spirit of adventure and freedom that had attracted you to motorcycles in the first place.
Such a commentary only considered the NC from the point of view of committed bikers. Meanwhile, the ensuing four years saw many adopt the un-demanding NC as a ride of choice with precocious enthusiasm. And when you’re coming from driving an 1100kg Jazz, a 217kg bike using half its engine seems pretty darn quick and exciting by comparison.
So much so, the NC-X has staked out its place on the list of the top 10 best-selling motorcycle models in Europe. It therefore also earned its right to survive the gamechanging Euro 4 regulations that come into force on January 1, when Honda’s far racier CBR600RR sportsbike will fail to make the cut.
For the record, New Zealand does not get the Euro 4-compliant version of the NC750X despite appearances to the contrary. Our NC750Xs are models lacking the final ingredient of Euro 4 – an ABS anti-lock system fitted to the brakes as standard equipment. Presumably, this decision was made to keep the price of the New Zealand model confined to $13,495. It’s a moot point whether the latest NC needs ABS given that the single disc fitted up front is hardly the most aggressive stopper in bikedom despite the latest Nissin four-piston caliper.
However, I’d argue that the New Zealand distributor, Blue Wing Honda, is expecting the NC750X to be bought by riders already well-versed in how to avoid locking the brakes when riding on slippery surfaces; and that clearly is at odds with the less-experienced profile of NC750X buyers in Europe. Any proven active safety system should be fitted to all motorcycles when possible, and corners should not be cut for the sake of marketing or price positioning.
Besides, a $13,999 NC750X equipped with ABS is still a highly-attractive buying proposition to my mind, and a bike designed and targeted at the sensible would then make even more sense. (So get with the program, BWH).
Phew, glad that’s off my chest, for the rest of the NC750X is really rather good. In comes a rortier-sounding exhaust for an otherwiseunchanged highly-efficient 40.2kW engine, LED lighting, and sharper-looking bodywork that also raises rider appeal. Welcome by-products of the redesign include better weather protection from a higher screen, and increased stowage space in the lockable cubby-hole found where most bikes have fuel tanks (which was already capable of swallowing a full-face helmet on the previous NC750X). A colour TFI screen updates the instrument display and it has a pretty good party trick.
If you trickle the NC along to the point where it starts using less than 3.0lL/100km of fuel, the bar-graph tachometer displays the revs in green. Using three to five litres every 100 then colours the tacho blue. Above that, you enter the red zone.
Honda can afford to turn an electronic tacho into some kind of colour-coded fuel-use monitor because the NC750X really doesn’t need a rev counter at all. The laidforward parallel twin in the midriff of the bike displays its car origins with its reluctance to rev. So you therefore tend to short-shift the snickety sixspeed box everywhere, surfing the 68Nm-high wave of riding force that feels like it arrives at 2000rpm and peaks at 5000.
There is no point in going any further up the rev range other than to initially establish that there really isn’t any point. Normally such a limited band of rev-play would frustrate me as NC700 and NC750 models have in the past. However, Honda has now given the bike the suspension that it has always deserved. It’s still a supple and plush ride, but there’s now a tauntness and a level of tyre feedback that makes it far more interesting.
The low-mounted powertrain is a great promoter of steering accuracy at urban speeds, while sharpish frame geometry and relatively narrow tyres easily overcome the steering inertia that a low centre of gravity promotes at higher speeds on an inviting backroad.
Capping it all is a comfy and natural riding position that gives a great view over the traffic of a congested motorway or over a crest on the open road.
So, I’ve got an earlymorning run to the airport tomorrow to catch a red-eye flight to Australia. Which test streetbike do you reckon I should take – the highly-tuned Aprilia or the low-impact Honda? At such times sensible can easily out-trump sexy, something the Europeans have recognised with their willingness to embrace the humblest of all Honda 750s – the NC750X.