The next year brought the Honda CB750 four, and the rest is lunatic- zoom-on-two-wheels history. From 3-cubic-inch nicest people to super- bike pilots in six years; what a debt we owe to, basically, a moped that had been to the gym.


in production with an engineering shock of a three-cylinder, two- stroke, 500-cc, 60-hp engine and a dry weight of 380 pounds. Its han- dling was legendary — the legend being that no one who put an H1 into an S-bend ever came out alive.


If it weren’t for the Honda 50, mo- torcycles might have disappeared completely from the United States. In “Easy Rider,” Peter Fonda would have gone looking for America with one knee in a Radio Flyer wagon. We’d call the yearly Vietnam vet memorial gathering in Washington “Footwear Thunder.” There’d be nothing to race at Daytona Bike Week but sand fleas. And every year half a million people would go to Sturgis, South Dakota, just to stand around and eat corn dogs.


Imagine trying to reintroduce motorcycles in today’s safety-silly, caution-carping, worry-wiener America. It’s possible we’d still be allowed to ride, but we’d have to


have airbags inside our helmet visors, wear hazmat suits and equip our bikes with legally mandated training wheels.


Thanks, little Honda.


And if you care to meet more of the nicest people, Honda 50s are still being made in such places as Cambodia, Nigeria and Peru. But you’d better hurry up. All those folks will be crazy weirdo bikers soon.


Thanks, little Honda


40 HAGERTY.COM


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