One OWNER from NEW
I took delivery of a Honda CX500 in April 1980, the first new bike I had owned then (and I have only owned two!). I could just about afford it, with some redundancy money and the sale of my BSA Thunderbolt. Before then I’d always owned British bikes, BSA in particular. I wish I hadn’t sold the Thunderbolt. She was a beauty: a 1970 model with lots of chrome and a great front brake. At the time most of my biking mates rode Japanese bikes and had a tendency to skit at British bikes: ‘They leak oil and are always breaking down.’ My Thunderbolt did neither. As I recall it was always my tools which I carried to fix their bikes: they didn’t need tools because their bikes never broke down!
I didn’t lust after a CX500. How could I? I tried to use logic. I read the road tests of the time. I didn’t want more than two cylinders (more cylinders = more maintenance and parts), and I wanted a bike large enough to go touring two-up. So a CX500 it was, complete with Craven panniers and top box. The shaft drive was an additional bonus.
The first two years were not all sweetness and light. My days of motorcycle fault-finding were not behind me. I had not entered the utopia of Japanese biking. Within a month or so of getting the CX, I got a notification from Honda suggesting that I did not
