Honda CB750/4
WHEN UNVEILED AT THE 1968 Tokyo Motor Show, Honda’s new baby made every large motorcycle immediately obsolete. The public had only just got their heads around OHC (overhead cam) engines in small Hondas and here in metal, rubber, and plastic was a full bore, 736cc, four-cylinder motor. This was the very fabric of dreams and totally unknown outside the racing. To add to the sophistication and bragging rights, the engine also had an electric start and four carburettors, and the front forks ran a disc brake! That might sound like nothing special today, but 50 years ago Honda’s CB750/4 was full-on poster-boy exotica.
In the UK, most large capacity bikes were still 650 twins, and Norton’s all-new (ish) 750 Commando was seen as state of the art. Over on the other side of the pond, Harley-Davidson was still making large of having overhead valves on road bikes and running sidevalve motors in flat track competition bikes! No one had ever come up with something so technologically advanced for consumption by Joe Public.
Pushrod twins had been top of the range until BSA/Triumph launched its (still pushrod) 750 triples, and here was an apparent oriental upstart challenging the status quo. In reality, Honda had already done just that five years earlier with the DOHC CB450, a machine the powers-that-be back in Blighty banned from competition due to a supposed illegal method of valve operation. And yet the truth and the future had been there for all to see – if they’d wanted to. From as early as the late 1950s, Honda was rolling out stunning machines of such technical brilliance that they defied belief.
When the wraps came off the CB750/4, you can’t help
