Honda CBX1000
40 years after its launch Honda look set to revive the mighty CBX1000, in a café racer style…
IT’S 40 YEARS since the CBX1000 was launched, and it looks like Honda will celebrate the anniversary with a modern version of the six-cylinder behemoth. These drawings of a new café racer were posted on Japan’s intellectual property website by Honda, and the amount of detail (you can see the reg/rec fins below the rear subframe) suggests a prototype could be revealed later this year. The bike is far more than a simple update of the CBX. The triple silencers on each side are a nod to the RC166 six-cylinder racer, for example, not the CBX, which had a single silencer each side, and the motor is liquid rather than air-cooled. Also, the bike’s silhouette is pure Sixties café racer rather than the CBX’S Seventies superbike style. So will it happen? Honda declined to comment, but with the sales success of bikes such as Triumph’s Thruxton R, there’s a glimmer of hope. Just imagine what one would sound like howling down the bypass…