1979 Honda CBX Road Test - page 2

The CBX comes from many places. Its project leader, 37-year-old Shoichiro Irimajiri, was in his mid-twenties when he designed both the 250cc and 297cc six-cylinder GP race engines, the 23,000 rpm, two-cylinder 50, and the 125cc five.

"When we were racing," Irimajiri explained, "we were up against the four cylinder two-strokes built by Yamaha and Suzuki. Cylinder multiplication was the only way we could be competitive. That's why we built the Five, and the two Sixes. The CBX-Six is a direct descendent of those race engines. That's one reason it only took a year and a half-we had the engine technology from our GP racing experience."

If the CBX has its mechanical roots buried in the glory years of the Sixties, the reason for building it - or more precisely, not building it sooner - connects with Honda's growing interest in automobiles in the early 1970s. Until the end of 1974, Honda had but one research center, located in Wako. The good engineers - including Irimajiri - were at work on the CVCC engine and the Civic. Those projects completed, another research center - located in Asaka - was established. The automobile and power products crowd stayed in Wako; Irimajiri and the rest of the motorcycle people moved to Asaka. The first project out of the reorganized Wako facility was the Accord; the first bikes out of Asaka were the 400cc, three-valve Hawks.

At Honda rookie engineers work on racing projects while the experienced veterans design the motorcycles the company sells to the public. While Irimajiri and his friends were building GP racers in the mid-Sixties his superiors were designing 450 twins and CB750s. But as time went by the experienced veteran engineers grew older, and their places were taken by a new generation: Irimajiri and his go-go young friends, frolicking in the lap of mighty Honda and pushing back against the restraints of convention to make room for their own ideas.

When Mr. Kume returned to Japan after his meeting with the journalists, his desire to pole-axe motorcycling with something beyond the realm of the probable dovetailed smoothly with the situation at home: a new research facility and a fresh batch of gifted young engineers, designers and stylists all blazing with new ideas and all exceedingly hot to trot.

Initially Honda R&D went forward with not one engine concept but two: the Six and a 1000cc four-valve Four. For the first six months both engines moved ahead in parallel development, and then the decision was made to go with the Six, even though the Four had been persuaded to produce only five fewer horsepower (98, as opposed to the Six's 103, measured at the crankshaft).

The Six was selected because it had more long-term potential based on Irimajiri's GP race engine experience, because the Four lacked the Six's smooth delivery of power, and because the Six had a feeling and a sound that only comes from Sixes. From the beginning the CBX was a four-valve engine, for obvious reasons: more engine speed equates with more engine power. Since in at least one regard engine speed is governed by the weight of the valve assembly, and since four small valves can be made to weigh less and are easier to control than two big ones, and since Honda probably knows more about four-valve engines than any other combustion engine manufacturer, and since a label on the fuel tank which reads "24 Valves" was thought to have special appeal, the choice was automatic, easy and quick.

Subsequent problems were more challenging; subsequent decisions were longer in coming. One of them had to do with the placement of that beast of an engine, and brought Irimajiri and his eight-man engine team into active contact with Norimoto Otsuka and his team of five designers. Otsuka, Honda's Chief Designer with direct responsibility for the styling of all Honda motorcycles sold in North America and Europe, saw the Six the same day the decision was made to select it instead of the Four. "The first time we laid eyes on it," Otsuka said, "we thought, 'great!' It was such a new bike, with so many new ideas and concepts. We knew it would be difficult. But we were all very excited about the possibilities, since it was such a big departure from anything we had done before, both in terms of its technical specifications and the kind of look and feel the bike had to have."

   

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