1982 Honda CBX Review - page 2

To running in place on the freeway, the CBX adapts. To hopscotching around traffic, the CBX adapts. Letting the big six-cylinder engine pull in second or third or fourth from its rpm-basement produces first a rising hum of determination that quickly transcends into a determined howl at 7000 rpm, and plenty of speed. Show-time machines like the CX500 Turbo give the rider lots of electronic games to watch; they have a rolling video arcade. But the CBX, as a more traditional piece, lacks computer-tech interior furnishings.

Breakfast in Ventura, on the Pacific Coast, provides the rendezvous for a passenger ready for a day up the coast. As a sports/tourer or flash/tourer, the CBX has space for the basic stuff for two: camera gear, binoculars, sweaters, jackets, tablecloth and picnic fixings for two who nibble. Fairing compartments, one lockable and the other not, hold glasses, maps and pocket-sized notebooks. One person -- were he a light traveler -- might live for a week on the road with the CBX’s lock/detachable luggage. For two, the CBX is an overnighter, a weekender, a motorcycle that joins interesting points and returns home.

With passenger onboard the CBX and the bags loaded to capacity, its damper push-pull know, side-mounted on the right, must be set on heavy damping. With the Pro-Link system, the single shock is well and truly buried, and taking the motorcycle half apart does little to expose that single shock. It's there, you know; you can feel the difference, as well as the difference boosted air pressure in the shock and front fork makes.

Turbo power might be entertaining for a rider traveling alone; but for two on the road together, there's no substitute for displacement. Big engines that work properly have immediate, predictable power delivered with authority and impunity that disregards grades, altitude steps, exhaust-system temperature and time of day. Passengers, to be sure, like that predictable power, the sameness of it, because a passenger sits back there, aware of controls, but utterly divorced from them. For that reason, there's comfort in mechanical things that respond immediately and predictably. It's something like being in a light plane, seeing the pilot move the controls and feeling no change in the aircraft's behavior for a second or two. On a motorcycle that eerie sensation has marbles rolling in the pit of a passenger's stomach, and not many passengers want to be turbo-eeriefied. Six cylinders of well-modulated and normally inducted power are perfect on a fast day up the Pacific Coast.

The day knits together on lines and points: To Ojai, over Route 33, a 40-mile stretch of high-speed mountain roads; into the desert and back to 101 courtesy of 166; up to Morro Bay and the sea; on toward the Hearst Castle at San Simeon; along the water's edge on One to Big Sur; back on 101, heading south into the night.

Day or night, the CBX would turn heads. The six-cylinder isn't as iridescent a flashbike as the Turbo, nor as in vogue with the click-word of the 1980s, nor as deliberate as the CX-TC. The CBX obeys that older, more traditional maxim about exotics: number of cylinders. Count 'em up, buddy, there are six. In motor culture lore, big numbers score: V-8 Moto Guzzis, Honda RC-161s; Marmon V-16s and V-12s by the lotful, from Packards to Ferraris.

Turning the 101 corner at Ventura, bearing east from north, you find yourself passing traffic at an indecent speed in the early morning hours. And what do you do? Snick the CBX down a couple of gears to agitate the tachometer into the 7000-rpm range and let that sucker sing; those little cylinders trump out a sound that reaches your innermost ear, the one that finds the sound inviting, charming, engaging, thrilling, electrifying, satisfying. What's more, it's addicting: again and again you reach for the sound, a music that comes only from numbers. If the CX500TC has the word, the CBX has the sound -- a wail that no compressor on earth can make.

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