1981 Honda CBX Road Test - page 6

Specifications notwithstanding, the CBX has totally neutral handling, and steering that is surprisingly light for such a heavy motorcycle. The bike is no joy in the confines of a crowded parking lot, as it has a lot of its weight invested in high places (the cylinder head, for example), and when it starts tipping you must either catch it fast or catch it firmly. But if you're rolling fast enough to bring the speedo needle off its peg, the CBX behaves very well, responding to commands without any show of reluctance. Its steering isn't light in the absolute sense; it isn't as heavy as that of some motorcycles the CBX outweighs by a hundred or more pounds. And the CBX also has a light, easily controlled clutch, excellent brakes and light, positive shifting to help its traffic manners. You can even get it shifted into neutral without a struggle. Our test bike's transmission would slip into neutral every time at the nudge of its lever.

When Honda says the CBX is a sports-touring motorcycle no truth-in-advertising law is being broken. The 1981 CBX can provide a marvelously sporting ride. We don't think it handles quite as well as the GS1100, but it's worlds better than anything else carrying saddlebags. The Honda's considerable weight seems perfectly distributed for rapid curved-roads travel, and for any given steering input you get the same response every time. It also has a marvelously steady way of coping with bumpy corners. Crank the CBX over, establish an arc, and that's how it goes until you issue other instructions. You get no nervous foot-shuffling and no unrequested course changes. If you keep the pace below a 50-percent (of peg-dragging, tire-sliding racing) effort, you won't even have to move the rear shock's damping-adjustment knob from its softest position.

For riding much above the 50-percent level you'll want to pull that rear suspension damping knob fully out. We know the knob only controls the rear shock's rebound damping, but pulling it feels as if there's slack taken in all over the chassis. With the knob pulled, the fork pumped up to its highest recommended pressure and the rear shock pressurized at 42 psi, we judged the CBX to be as good as it would get on adjustments alone. And it was very good. Nearly perfect, if kept below an 80-percent effort. Pushed harder, the CBX's weight takes over, it starts scuffing its way through wider arcs than you anticipate and its chassis no longer feels entirely solid. If your riding style entails diving into turns with closed-throttle, the CBX will shake its head a little, too, at the 80-percent level. The bike's steering remains neutral at a forced pace, and it is more competent at the game than all but a handful of other motorcycles. Even so, it loses some of its composure when hard pressed; both you and it will be happier with less forceful riding.

Maybe the best way for you to understand the CBX, to grasp what it truly is, would be to imagine that all of our highways had been made to curve around and follow the landscape rather than slashing through it. In that case America Honda's 1981 CBX would be incomparably the finest touring motorcycle. Others might be faster around a road race course or down a drag strip; others certainly will haul a bigger load of luggage. But if you were going to hurry long distances on roads not scribed as the shortest distances between points, the CBX would be hard to beat. So it isn't perfectly steady at the extremes of cornering, with the pavement striking sparks from its pipes; it's nearly effortless at 75 percent and can be ridden at that pace all day. So it doesn't have saddlebags much more commodious than big briefcases; it will carry a change of clothes. In short, the '81 Honda CBX will do what the best sports-touring vehicles have always done: It will take you to your destination quickly, and in glittering, riff-raff dazzling, six-cylinder style. Other considerations are beside the point. It can be shown by facts and figures that a 427 Corvette is better than an Aston-Martin, but ask yourself which one will make service station attendants call you "sir."

   

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