|
| Review |
Poise. Balance. Agility. Durability.
I bet that the first bike to spring to mind from that description would not be Honda's unflatteringly-nicknamed "Plastic Maggot", but - hey - sometimes context is everything and it was 1978 when that particular model first saw the light of day in the UK. So, yes, by comparison to many of the flex-framed behemoths upholding the "UJM" tag, the CX500 was actually quite petite and nimble.
We may never understand what possessed the mighty Honda to come up with the detail of this particular concept, but perhaps the design department had some especially hardcore hallucinogens going down that day. Knocking together a low-revving transverse V-twin pushrod engine with dubious cam-tensioning qualities, a tall and spindly centre-spine frame, agriculturally-primitive shaft drive and some deeply unattractive plastics produced two results. The first was an engine at the exact centre of gravity (Honda's preferred marketing point, implying perfect handling); the second was one of the ugliest bikes ever made (everybody else's preferred observation).
The drugs obviously didn't wear off that quickly, as several variants were also spawned, including the 500 Custom, the Silverwing and the 650 Eurosport (with the all-important Eddie Lawson-esque headlamp bucket fairing, gleaming white bodywork with odd-coloured painted squares and lots of shiny chrome). For an encore, they did go on to fit turbos to both the 500 and 650 models, which was possibly the single most lunatic motorcycling idea ever - although it did give the world the classic "OBRUT" sticker, highly visible thanks to being plastered across a fairing the size of Luxembourg.
I had an '83 CX650 Eurosport non-turbo, though, bought precisely because it was so unashamedly ugly that I thought it must indicate a sense of glowering purposefulness: rather like that which Yamaha had made stylish with the brutally hunched V-Max. Wrong. It was unashamedly ugly simply because it had been designed by people with no concept of style. Still, something had to hold the trophy while waiting for the Morbidelli V8 to be invented...and at least it stood out in a crowd.
Those were the days when acronyms and patents were taking off big-time, so of course it was festooned with stickers proclaiming it had TRAC (anti-dive front end - and thank the lord nobody does those any more) and Pro-Link (rear monoshock with, I believe, rising rate adjustment), bevel shaft drive and Comstar wheels. None of which, in all honesty, seemed to help that much.
It wasn't actually that dreadful a bike, looks aside, just not very good either. The handling was a trifle quirky, as the shaft had a hefty kick left or right - depending on whether the throttle was being opened or closed - and would happily tie itself in knots on a hurried downchange. What I thought was a dodgy clutch turned out to be a cable badly-routed around the headstock: once sorted, the lack of slippage in right-hand corners made it a lot nicer to ride (remember - context is important and "nicer" doesn't necessarily mean "good"). It was comfortable - if a bit prone to vibration - and spacious and the engine pulled along effectively enough anywhere in the rev range. The speedo went up to about 130 (approximately: mine was an Italian import with a kph dial) but it would be fair to say that wasn't a place you would really want to be. The word "scary" springs into memory...a sedate 70 - 80 mph was more like it's territory. Reliability was fine - I don't recall anything ever really going wrong with it - and it was cheap to buy and run. Oh, and it had an indicator relay that beeped in time with the flashes, which was frankly embarrassing. Always meant to replace it, but it was wrapped into the solid mass of insulating tape that was the loom and I never quite got around to disentangling it.
In hindsight, it did suffer a little unfairly by comparison, being sandwiched between my first proper bike (a GSX550) and my first proper next-generation bike (a VFR750). The handling traits I would now refer to as "character" and "idiosyncracy" and not worry about could be quite frighteningly unpredictable at the time - tracking a white line in the wet, for example, was always a bit of a death-grip moment. Unfortunately, the good points - sturdiness and comfort - didn't count for very much when what I really wanted was something that went fast: like my Suzuki had done, only more so! I kept the CX for about a year and managed a fair few miles on it, most of them enjoyable because I was still pretty new to the thrill of bigger bikes...some of them exciting, but mostly for all the wrong reasons!
In some circles they're viewed as a bit of a cult classic, which does go to show that folks are weird. Still not a particularly pricey classic, for all that, but I rather suspect it would be hard to find one that started in good condition. Especially since CXs - mainly the 500s - were a favourite with despatch riders back in the day and a lot of them did astronomical mileage. Would I buy another one, though? No, not under any circumstances. There are far better cult bikes to own if it's a restoration project you're after and it had some vastly better contemporaries and successors to fill the really, really cheap hack niche. A product of the time, and best left there, I would say. |
|
| Submitted by |
| endemoniada_88 in Littlehampton, West Sussex on 24/04/2009 |
|
| This review has been shown 75667 times |
|
| Write a Review for Honda CX |
|
| See ads for Honda CX for sale |
|
|
Comfort
Handling
Braking
MPG
Reliability
Running Costs
Performance
Dream Appeal
|