Honda’s CB750, as unveiled 1968 before going on sale 1969, is well-reported as the bike which was one of the biggest motorcycling ‘game-changers’ of all. As the first mass-production motorcycle with four cylinders, it is regarded as not only the first ‘superbike’ but also the one which ushered in a new era of Japanese dominance. It was quickly followed by machines like Suzuki’s GT750 and Kawasaki’s H1 750 and Z1 900.
As the first production bike with a disc front brake and electric starter, the CB also brought new features into motorcycling (at an affordable price) which many of the heritage European brands couldn’t match, so accelerating their demise. And as the famous winner, ridden by Dick Mann, of the 1970 Daytona 200 against a massed Triumph/BSA works team of specially prepared triples and including riders such as Mike Hailwood and Dave Aldana, the CB very much cemented Honda’s position on the world motorcycling map. Today it remains the market leader.
And yet… the CB750 conception and creation, itself a marvel in under a year, is less well known and was actually a direct consequence of the perceived failure of a preceding model.
In 1965, Honda, then mostly known for its lightweight production twins but also with growing success in the smaller capacity Grand Prix racing classes, launched its biggest road bike so far, the twin-cylinder Dream CB450. Designed specifically to appeal to the US market it had performance that matched or bettered many larger rivals but, even so, its sales in the US were poor, with Americans seeming to still prefer big-cubed Harley-Davidsons and, particularly, British parallel twins such as the Triumph Bonneville.
At the same time, in early 1967, after five consecutive GP world titles with its multi-cylinder 350s, sweeping the 250 crown with its now legendary RC166 250-6 and coming second in its debut in the 500 class with its RC181 four, Honda decided to withdraw from GP racing at the end of the year.
Towards the end of 1967 members of Honda’s R&D team traveled to the US to conduct market research, meet with their associates from American Honda Motor and to discuss how to remedy the problem of the CB450’s poor sales.
One meeting saw American Honda service manager Bob Hansen have lunch with no less than Soichiro Honda himself. Honda told Hansen they were working on a new ‘king of bikes’ idea, likely a 750. While Hansen, himself an ex-racer who was also aware Triumph was developing a 750 triple, is reported to have responded that the new bike “better not be a twin”, suggesting instead that, inspired by the RC181 “it should be a four”.
Thereafter things moved fast. Further discussions led American Honda to specify a 750cc four with four carburetors and four exhausts, to underline its configuration, and a peak power output of at least 67bhp (1bhp more than Harley’s then 1200 big twin). It also requested a maximum speed of 200 km/h (125mph) and acceleration from 0 to 400m of just 13.2 seconds – significantly beyond what any rival was capable of.
Full-scale design work began in Japan in February 1968, with its new engine based on the know-how gained from the RC181. Development was led by Yoshiro Harada and a team of about 20 were involved.
The result, the first CB750 prototype, was incredibly unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October 1968, just eight months later, and it caused a sensation. It also forced Kawasaki, who at that time was also working on a 750 four of its own, to scrap its project and return to the drawing board. The result, in 1973, was the even bigger, twin cam, Z1 900.
But more was to come. With the American market key to the CB750’s success, just as important was Honda’s first US dealer meeting in Las Vegas the following January where the new bike was top of the agenda. Four prototypes with the famous ‘sand-cast’ engines were displayed in each of the four colourways, red, blue, green and gold.
According to reports, American Honda President, Kihachiro Kawashima, initially announced a price of just $1,295, which caused a furore as that was over a thousand dollars less than any rival. It created a clamour for orders – so much so, in fact, that Kawashima promptly raised the price to $1,495.
“Since large bikes were selling for between $2,800 and $4,000, all 2,000 dealers burst into thunderous applause when they heard its price,” remembered Harada.
Even then, it could have been more. As soon as the production version in July US dealers were deluged with orders with the initial production forecast of 1500 units a year proving woefully inadequate and with dealers able to charge a premium of up to $2,000.
As a result, that 1,500 units a year became a monthly figure and even that was not enough, so the number jumped to 3,000.
Those numbers not only underlined the fact that a new superbike age had begun but helped propel Honda (and all the Japanese) towards world dominance at the cost, primarily, of the once dominant British manufacturers.
British bikers, meanwhile, got their first look of the machine that would change motorcycling forever soon after. On April 5, 1969, at the Metropole Hotel, Brighton, venue for the Brighton motorcycle show, two of the pre-production examples of the all-new Honda CB750, in gold and green, as revealed to US dealers the previous year, were displayed for the very first time.
The final confirmation that a new era had begun came on track. In August, a Honda R&D rider team of Morio Sumiya and Tetsuya Hishiki, riding specially prepared CB won the Suzuka 10 Hours endurance race, followed in September by victory in the 24 Hours of Bordeaux, then the biggest endurance race in France. But biggest of all came the following March when a sole CB750, entered by Bob Hansen (remember him?) and ridden by Dick Mann won the Daytona 200, then the world’s biggest bike race of all.
And who were trailing in its wake? None other than the Triumph and BSA triples of a huge and expensively assembled British team which was trying – and failing – to keep ahead of Honda.
The British bikes would never again achieve such success. The last BSA triple was built in 1972. The CB750, meanwhile, helped establish the transverse-four as the new superbike template, spawning a whole family of Honda spin-offs (not to mention rivals from Kawasaki and Suzuki), while the CB750 itself survived in production for almost a decade right up to 1978 by which time nearly half a million had been sold.
That gold prototype, meanwhile, as shown at Brighton, was later sold at auction in 2018 for a whopping £161,000, making it one of the most valuable Japanese production bikes ever.
Words: Phil West
Pictures: Honda
