Small and beautifully formed – that’d be a good sobriquet for Honda’s jewel-like VF500. Unfortunately it’s been erroneously tarred with the same brush as the poisoned VF750 and has been labelled ‘guilty by association’.
The reality is that neither the 500 nor its small, 400cc brother were or are the cam-eating, enginewrecking monsters they’ve been made out to be. The VF500 is quite possibly the epitome of Honda’s contemporary drive towards mass centralisation as it strove to stay off the still potent threat from the likes of Yamaha’s two-strokes.
Ultimately the VF500 never was or could be a marketplace competitor to an LC or Powervalve but, if you accept the notion of different
