Hemmed in betwixt a veritable seething mass of commuter cars and delivery vans on Battersea Bridge on a dark, cold, drizzly night, hacking between my pen pushing job and my diminutive suburban pied-a-terre, my mind wanders back to headier days, five years ago as an exchange student in Los Angeles, cruising down Santa Monica Boulevard on my Honda CB450.
I had sold the 67 V8 Ford convertible (that’s a car) and decided I would buy a Harley Davidson. That was before I found out that the only sort of Harley you could procure for $600 would only be recognisable as an H-D from the registration document (like British bikes, if they are rideable, Harleys always retain some sort of premium). My last motorcycle in the UK had been a '73 oil-in-the-frame Bonnie, not the product of one of Meriden’s finest hours but pleasing nonetheless. I never saw a British machine in California the whole year I was there: I imagine they are just too temperamental for those mellow laid back West Coast dudes.
Then I saw this CB450 advertised on campus, alongside ,the usual ads for jacuzzi repairs and counselling services for the recently reincarnated. Anyway, it was $550 with 4000 miles on the clock - the low mileage caught my eye. The owner had got it from his brother-in-law who had bought it while he was a marine serving in Japan, then brought it home where it stayed in his garage for a decade or so. The vendor was disposing of the 450 to make way for some sort of hotshot water-cooled Yamaha V4 affair (with hindsight it was probably an RD500LC), it went better with his Pontiac Firebird in the driveway; I suppose.
Bright metallic red it was, pristine condition, like a gigantic Honda CD175 (where’s the shotgun - Ed). As a domestic version intended for the Japanese market, I don’t know if it was the same as the US model of that time; I doubt it it had slightly valanced chrome mudguards (no sign of a pelmet, however), narrow handlebars and a big twin leading shoe front brake. In short, a thoroughly square looking machine - for my tastes this was its charm.
As far as I know (I think I was just starting to wear long trousers to school then), the 450 was not available in the UK in 1973. Educated sources, and old Berk magazines, tell me that was because wayward 450 owners used to enjoy humiliating Bonneville riders by showing them the proverbial clean pair of heels. Unfortunately, redlining the engine to 10500rpm necessary for this feat tended to rapidly superannuate the valve assembly, causing them to encounter the piston crown and seize the engine (surely not Ed). The model disappeared for a few years until a stroked version appeared in the form of the CB500T, about which the less said the better,
Anyway, to return to the story, it was love at first sight, unease at second sight and a kind of irksome loathing with firmer acquaintance, like the girl you meet when you’re drunk and then arrange to meet again when you're sober, my fondness for the 450 diminished rapidly. Like the Suzuki T500 and the Kawasaki 500, this original, first full-size, Honda was just a smaller design blown up in scale, as if they had taken the blue-prints for the 350 and just altered the scale on them (save that the bigger bike came before the 350 - Ed).
Handling deficiencies, which might be excusable on a quarter litre machine, were not a whole bundle of laughs on a much heavier, ton-up, vehicle. To say the 450 under-steered or over-steered would be to imply, wrongly, that it had any such definable handling characteristics at all. For the six months I owned it, I never got a handle on the machine - was it under-damped, was it over-damped? Too much preload, too little? I suppose I will never really know.
Maybe I should have binned the original Bridgestone tyres (antique status would have been more appropriate - Ed). Quite seriously, they seemed to have a rectangular cross-section, like a car tyre, particularly those knobbly crossplies you see on the back wheel of Morris Travellers out in the country.
Ah, but I hear the readers say, what about the revolutionary engine, with the unique torsion bar valve springs? Well yes, the redline did appear to be a damn sight far round the rev counter. However, having heard the scare stories about valves dropping, I was wary of taking it much over 8000rpm, after which the engine started to sound terminally busy.
Like the old Triumph twins, and unlike the Jap fours, you felt you really had to baby the motor and treat it with kid gloves. The 450 had neither the gusty torque and wide power band of the Bonneville, nor had it the nervy, cammy peakiness and narrow power band found in the CB400/4, for example.
I remember once fondly imagining that I could blow off a Yam XS400 twin, a device that had always been laughed at by the motorcycle press for its lack of go - not so, I’m. afraid, the XS killed the Honda. The 450 never seemed to be in the right gear, the engine was invariably labouring or longing to change up, in whatever gear, including top. To this day I’m not sure why this was. Narrow powerband? Badly spaced ratios? Wrong size of back sprocket? None of these seemed conclusive, maybe it was a combination of all of them.
One thing I do know was it bugged the hell out of me after owning a Bonnie which could be left in fourth for most of the day, whilst the Honda was reminiscent of riding a twenty speed racing pushbike, incessantly jockeying between ratios. It makes you wonder just what the design of the short stroke, DOHC, 180° crankshaft, twin was trying to achieve.
To cap it all, the bike was amazingly uncomfortable. I had never really thought there were much to motorcycle ergonomics, but the 6’ 3" of my body that had managed to disport itself on Honda stepthru, CD175 and other such ignominious steeds was totally cramped on the 450.
I toyed briefly with the idea of riding the 450 to New York to have it shipped back to Britain, but I dismissed such notions after half a second’s deliberation. A turkey is a turkey regardless of whether it’s unique or ubiquitous. The 450 was certainly very rare but it had to have something more for me than just that - it had, at least, to be good, which I don’t think it was.
I had looked after it well, changing the oil every 1000 miles with good quality oil and so forth. I flogged it for $100 more than I paid for it to some dupe on a horrible custom Suzuki GS550 who wanted a bike for his girlfriend. When he went off up the road on his new purchase he took the cold engine straight up to maximum revs - I don’t think the guy was strong on machine empathy, so much for all my careful maintenance. Still, I suppose, if I had really cared I would have waited till a suitably caring owner came along. I wonder how much longer it lasted? It’s probably lying mangled now in some scrapyard on the edge of a dusty freeway.
Yes, despite all I’ve said so far, you do detect a hint of sadness - I loved that bike in some ways, that ridiculous styling got to me. Back to the present - some merchant banker trying to broadside me and my Honda runabout over the parapet of Battersea Bridge.
Patrick Latimer