Honda Hornet returns
By Ben Purvis
Honda used the EICMA show in Milan to reveal concept designs for an upcoming Hornet naked roadster - and while the company was silent about the machine's future, we understand it's going to appear later in 2022 as the first machine in a whole new line of middleweight twins.
That's right, where the Hornet name was previously used on four-cylinder bikes, most memorably the CB600F Hornet, but also 900 cc and 250 cc models as well as the part-faired CB600S, the next generation will use a parallel twin engine. Honda hasn't announced any technical details, but Japanese sources say it's a 755 cc twin, designed with similar thinking to the 1,084 cc unit used in the Africa Twin but focussed on high revs and performance, separating it completely from the economy-focussed, low-performance 745 cc twin of the NC750 models.
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| Expect an entirely new twin-cylinder range |
Honda's design illustrations appear to show the engine's cylinder head is wider at the intake side, hinting that it will use the UniCam design of the Africa Twin to help make it as compact as possible, with a single camshaft that acts directly on the intake valves and opens the exhausts via rocker arms. However, the company has also specifically referenced the fact that the engine will be high-revving, which might indicate that it will adopt some sort of variable valve timing system.
The styling illustrations show a machine that's clearly a futuristic development of the old Hornets, with a sleek headlight and a superbike-style seat unit, and a video released by Honda includes a brief snatch of engine sound that shows the bike is actually much more developed than the company's renderings suggest. The same video also showed pistons moving in an uneven fashion, suggesting a 270-degree crank angle like the Africa Twin's.
Once in production, the new twin-cylinder engine is expected to form the basis of a whole range of new models. As well as renewing trademark rights on the Hornet name this year, Honda has made a global effort to regain rights to the 'Transalp' branding. Our Japanese contacts say that the Transalp will also use this engine, and just as Honda uses its CB500 engine across a wide selection of bikes, and follows the same pattern with the NC750 and Africa Twin motors, which are all used in disparate machines, the new 755 cc twin is eventually expected to become a mainstay used in multiple Honda models.
