What if Steve Jobs had designed a motorcycle? Unlike most major motorcycle OEMs, Jobs didn’t believe in market research, customer surveys, etc. He believed Apple could figure out what people wanted to buy, even though they had never seen it, or imagined it. Maybe it will take this type of approach to product design to get Gen Y interested in two wheelers.
These new models are reminiscent of Honda’s poorly received (at least in this marked) DN-01 and, going even further back, Dan Gurney’s motorcycle design, the Alligator. In addition to the low seat height, the CTX700N (naked) pictured above, as well as the CTX700 (faired, below) are powered by a 670cc parallel twin, first introduced by Honda in the NC700 bikes last year. These are not horsepower monsters, rather emphasizing smooth, low-end power delivery.
The brakes and suspension are fairly basic. The suspension is non-adjustable, and there is only a single disc up front (thankfully 320mm in size). The two machines will weigh rough 480 pounds wet.
The CTX700N will be priced at $6,999 or $7,999 with the DCT automatic, and ABS. It will be available in Candy Red or Black. The CTX700 is a bit more expensive at $7,799 or $8,799 with DCT and ABS. The CTX700 comes in Candy Red or Pearl White.
Honda says these models are just the first in a new line of CTX models to be introduced in the future. CTX stands for comfort, technology and experience.
Very Nice Article ,,
ReplyDeleteAdvie Motor
If folks are wondering what the magic pill is, they need to take the pills OUT of the whole equation! Ha-ha. The problem with bikes today, the reason why the whole market has gone down-hill, is they're still being designed for these two market segments - the older beardos who wanna play cowboy & dress up all "tough", pose on a cruiser - and the slightly less old chachi Vanilla Ice fans who want that fugly assed crotch-rocket hewn from a solid block of plastic with chop-chop lines all this way and that. But look at what young folks are doing with classic Japanese machines these days - there are a TON of enthusiastic youngsters attempting to put together the bike which THEY want, from the eBay junk-pile. You don't even need to ask, just LOOK at what they're building! Good looking classic race-bikes seem to be their inspiration, a connection to the past - and they're picking over bits & pieces from the newer crap for higher performance suspension components and running gear. I understand the difficulty in getting a youngster interested, MY Lil' GRRRL wanted another bigger SCOOTER, but I had an old KZ440LTD which is about the most perverse thing to fix up & dump money into, so of course I HAD TO do it! Ha-ha. Instead of a highway-capable scooter I've tried to make IT more "scooterish" with some Maxi-Scooter tires, 110/70-16 & 140/70-16, wrapped around some NOS Borrani 3.00x16" drop-center shouldered/flanged alloy rims such as you'd normally see on an old Chopper rear wheel or more to the point on a side-car racer, and then I squished a Suzuki 4LS drum hub into the middle with spokes shorter than cigarettes - with NOS belt-drive so she didn't get chain grease on her passenger friends' jeans etc, all tailored towards simplicity & ease of maintenance, practicality - I call it the "KZ440LOL" - But what I found interesting is how when I snapped up a 3rd matching rim & matching 2LS drum hub from T500 Titan, she exclaimed "SIDE-CAR!!!" and spoke of hauling the dog around on it. Of course now that she's older, she's not intimidated by bigger bikes. When we first spoke of fixing a bike for her she was 10 or 11, and my '82 CB750F was too big in her opinion. Well NOW she looks at the "CB900K0 Bol Bomber" I'm building (fat wire rims, CB1100R gas tank polished up for the "toaster-tank" look, & she sez "That's the one you're building for ME, right?" - Funny thing, what with all of the changes to the KZ440LTD I showed pics to her & all of her friends circa age 13 or 14, and THEY all said they liked how it looked in the first place! Ha-ha. Actually, when she was quite young, & hadn't yet seen my '82 CB750F yet, I gave her a stack of classic bike magazines & said to pick one, she picked out a fully dressed '82 CB900F2 with the fairing & luggage - actually I think it was a North American version, without the silver boomerang rims just regular black Comstar wheels. But yeah, it's not difficult to ask young people what THEY think the perfect motorcycle should look like. Heck they could probably turn the current 450cc dirt-bikes into a pretty decent street commuter with a change of rims, an old fashioned gas tank, and a bubble fairing. Kids would ride THAT they'd probably snap 'em up! I've always pictured an "adult sized" embiggened Honda DAX, based around a Guzzi Falcone or Aermacchi Ala D'Oro 400cc engine, just a bigger copy of the DAX monocoque pressed sheet-metal frame, wire wheels of course basically the same set I've done for this KZ -
ReplyDeleteI've got a ZILLION ideas about marketing bikes these days. But one principal idea which would move things forward for electric vehicles, is they need to take the restrictions off of the class for beginners' electric scooters. I keep seeing all of these cute little electric scooters on the road, and brave young idealistic enthusiastic bright eyed lovely ladies riding 'em - and they can barely keep up with bicycle traffic let alone autos. They're getting run off the road it's bloody dangerous for 'em! So I feel that instead of making 'em equivalent to a moped or scooter, the electric scooters should be given an unlimited power & weight, speed etc - for licensees as young as 14yrs old heck the cigarette companies know how to hook people this early I dunno how the bike people ever forgot - Let the electric scooters for 14yr old students compete at more of a 150cc-250cc sort of level. Well give 'em that choice between power and range, is the thing. They'll still ride conservatively so they can get from place to place, but they'll still have the power to move safely between the SUV's with the airheads talking on their telephones & reading their tablets, drinking coffee & eating french-fries etc. Let 'em have THAT as a first impression on a new electric vehicle, maybe THEN they'll buy another one down the line! This would take a huge amount of lobbying, but in the end I feel it would catch on from one place to the next - find a state in the US or province in Canada where it can be done, where it would be worthwhile to trial a new model like that - then let legislators in other places do their own work to enable their own positive forward-thinking pro-active change toward EV's - but let it start with the KIDS not with the uber-rich childless middle-aged urban professionals - with a SCOOTER not a luxury car.... Bah. I could still draw up some decent designs for fossil-fuel powered bikes too of course. But I'll tell you, I see the road ahead and electric bikes are just as exciting to me. But picture 'em not as more of these plastic crotch rockets, but as a revisitation upon past themes. Big electric regenerative brakes inside of 4LS drum style hubs, maybe with an internal disc on one side for emergency back-up - or perhaps the electro-magnet windings themselves could even have a wear surface of their own for an emergency panic-stop drum-type action of their own? Tough to say. I picture rare Earth magnets and windings - most definitely wire spokes. But the main thing, for a given power rating try and look at where bikes themselves were at during that phase of power development. Or weight - if the batteries are still so prohibitively heavy, then let it be a Goldwing type touring rig, with a plug-in overnight charger & a typical "Iron-Butt" rally worth of daily mileage. Cut down on the ancillaries to keep the curb weight down, but yeah it's still feasible to build a Prius type power-train or better still TESLA, into a big touring bike. One main consideration is to ditch the shaft drive and ALWAYS use a belt-drive. It's bewildering to me how regular chains and sprockets themselves haven't been supplanted by a comprehensive system of belts & pulleys. The Gates Industries "Poly-Chain Carbon GT" but better still, with the double-helical ("DNA" for marketing hype ha-ha) belt with the teeth angled both ways, such that it needn't have the guides on both sides of the pulleys - they helical tooth thing is self-centering -
ReplyDeleteThey wouldn't need to do ALL of the different chain gauges. Like 525 vs 530 vs 630 etc - or even all of the same tooth counts. Or even all of the same belt lengths as are seen in chain. Surely covering HALF of the options available to chain-drive systems, would serve every motorcycle on the road. Because getting that extra tooth worth of oomph in your ratio doesn't mean squat when you're transmitting that extra 5% more power to the rear wheel! See it's stuff like THAT which has held the industry back, that they're not moving the TECH ahead like they should, yet at the same time the surface aesthetics of bikes have become so far far out of touch with the "man on the street" that you've got to already BE a bike nut, to wanna get a new bike. For a long time now, it's the same introductory models as a generation ago are still doing duty of bringing in the fresh blood, coming out of the garage to do a summer's duty here & there. At which point the kid "gets it", and is willing to dress up like a power ranger & throw a leg over a hideous modern art sculpture in order to GO FAST. Well that's putting the cart before the horse IMHO. We need better looking bikes AND better performance. To put it simply, all of this recent spat of "retro bikes" should've been played out on the premier class go-fast machines. The Guzzi V7 shouldn't have been a bored-out V50 Monza, the Honda CB1100 should've been MORE powerful than the '81-'83 CB1100R/CB1100F - & more to the point the bike at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2007 which folks were excited about was the CB1100R prototype, not the boring street-bike sitting nearby.
ReplyDeleteSomething which has always confused me, is how fins on a liquid-cooled engine are deemed to be "fake" - Don't they increase the surface area, dissipate heat & shrink the required radiator size down? Well then, why not go whole-hog and make liquid-cooled motors that DO look good? I can understand the gut reaction to "fake" bike parts - like that fake billet chunk on the side of the Suzuki Gladius - but what about all of the OTHER weirdly shaped hunks of plastic all over a bike like that? Why single out THAT hunk of plastic? Ridiculous. The Suzuki Bandit retained oil cooling, left some very tiny grooves all over the sides of it's barrels. But I'm talking about proper FINS on an engine. And nicely sculpted side-covers for that matter. And tubular frame rails. Triumph understood THAT design element with their Speed Triple, it's why you can still turn one into a decent café racer. But yeah I'm picturing a Honda that's neither the CB1100 slash "Seven-Fifty" soldiering on with it's engine from the CBX750F (Why don't they make a version with the 'F type bodywork on it? How hard would THAT be? Astralite wheels have come back, why not COMSTARS???) and yet not a CBR either. Both and neither at the same time. An engine which is both water-cooled, oil-cooled AND air-cooled. Via the simple addition of some sculpting around/into the side-walls of the "water-jacket" - enough to make an engine beautiful, while at the same time shrinking the radiator down to the size of a large oil cooler. That alone would free up soooo much for the designers. Then bring back the pressed sheet-metal monocoque frames of the '60s - the leading-link forks for that matter, and Honda could get on board with the futuristic suspension tech - bring the wire wheels back to the sporting models. Composite wheels at the very least, such as Comstars or Astralites. Heck bring back the twin shocks for that matter. Stop trying to market cruisers restyled as plastic crotch rockets, and instead give some of that classic polished alloy & wire spokes, tubular bars & round clocks of the cruiser set and stick that onto the crotch-rockets.
It's really not crotch-rocket science!
-S.
Sorry for ranting but - this stuff really gets me! These 700cc slanted-twin motors seem fantastic, so does the chassis. But the designers keep making the same mistakes and it's ridiculous to see 'em do everything BUT cut out the CAD/CAM B.S. and pull out a French-curve, drafting table a pencil maybe even some modelling clay! Just chuck out the computers and get back to wtf they were doing before the big four all went down this road!
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