This is the road test of the 1981 Honda CBX, the first sport-touring version, which appeared in Cycle magazine's April 1981 issue. Cycle ceased publication in 1991. Click on the pictures to view full-size versions (requires a Javascript-capable browser).

Honda rethinks and re-engineers the CBX into a single-shock sports-tourer that has long-haul built-ins.

LIFE HAS ITS SURPRISES. HONDA'S CBX was fashioned in the image of an illustrious family of GP racing machines, made to stand as their surrogate among the muffled and headlighted, hailed as the ultimate in Super Sport motorcycles. But it proved to be just too much of the wrong kind of bike for the Super Sport game. It needed help and we were sure that help would be forthcoming. What we didn't expect was that the mighty six-cylinder Honda would be reborn as a sports-tourer, saddlebags and all. Even less did we anticipate that the born-again CBX would be more successful in its 1981 Grand Luxe role than it ever was trying to be a street-legal GP device.

Honda actually had scant choice but to do what was done with the CBX. This flashiest of all Hondas got off to a lame start in 1978 and never gained the acceptance it deserved. Cycle's February '78 report told the world there was a CBX, but early problems delayed deliveries to dealers until late that year -- by which time many potential CBX customers were riding the then-new Yamaha XS1100s and Suzuki GS1000s. Then came our report that the refined '80 CBX was slower than the original. It wasn’t -- after an ignition-advance mistake had been corrected -- but the bike continued to sell like cold-cakes. And it became clear that the CBX probably never would capture hordes of buyers' hearts and wallets, So, Honda couldn't justify a mega-yen effort to make the 600-plus pound CBX float like a butterfly and sting like a bee; they might succeed but not without raising the Six's price prohibitively high.

Facing facts, Honda decided that if the CBX wasn't going to be the world's fastest motorcycle then it should be the nicest. Let others contend for the fastest-quickest-nicest honors; the CBX would be transformed into a luxurious sportstourer, a faster and better-handling alternative to the big GL1100 Interstate. A fraction of Honda's CBX-update money would go for engine work; the bulk was budgeted for chassis and luxury-accessory development.

Too much money spent on the CBX's engine would have been money wasted. It's no secret that this magnificently smooth and elaborate 24-valve Six is markedly short-winded. You'd expect the CBX to make big power and it can, but fleetingly. Then the temperature of its closely packed parts rises and the output drops. That tended to remove from consideration all dreams of a hyper-horsepower CBX, which would only have faded faster and lost reliability. And in some parts of the world motorcycles having more than 100 horsepower are prohibited. Earlier CBX engines would flash about 103 at their cranks (we are told), which meant Honda had a second reason for shaving off power at peak revs and adding it down at lower engine speeds-which is what was done to the CBX for 1981.

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