“You won’t like this one very much I suppose – what with you being a two-stroke man!” says Dave the owner. Well, it’s a reasonable assumption given my perhaps unhealthy obsession with older stinkwheels.
And, to possibly reinforce this, I’ve just got off two of Dave’s trail bikes …yes, two-strokes – naturally. I’ve ridden several 550/4s over the years and some have failed to impress; Okay, so the odd one has made me smile but in the main I’ve come away feeling – meh – as the kids say. I always loved the look of the original 500/4s and felt the F1 550s were something of poor(er) second. I get that Honda was focused on car production at the time and had to rehash what it had rather than run out new designs. However, for me personally, the cosmetic reworking of the later 550s in general just looked like a subtly cynical redraft that cut down on shiny chrome pipes, silencers and, in some instances, even vinyl graphics.
Yes, Okay, Honda was also looking to capitalise upon the sales successes (in Europe at least) of the seminal 400/4 itself, a financial rehash of the previous 350/4. Plain, flat colours, minimal decals and the like had boosted the 400’s appeal but that wasn’t an automatic guarantee that the same would apply with the 550 F1. Oh, and whoever back at Honda HQ thought brown vinyl offered a cool look was plainly wrong. It
