A “CLASSIC TOURER” sort of.

There are articles and stories, web sites and forums that espouse the XBR500 Honda’s reason for being – that it was conceived “as a response to the Yamaha SR500”. If you study the history of both brands, I can’t see any Honda that has been produced in response to any other model/brand, except perhaps NSU.

Jim Scaysbrook

It’s more likely to me that Honda figured (a) it had a very usable donk in the four-valve XR single that had been top of the pops on the off-road scene for quite a while, (b) it would take very little in the way of redesign to come up with a road version, and (c) that road version, in order to avoid being labelled a stereotyped old banger, should be a modern repro, with accoutrements. And when it comes to any comparison with the SR500, itself a fine and enormously successful and long-running motorcycle, top of those accoutrements was an electric starter. That’s logic speaking, a category for which Honda is justly famous. What is illogical then, is that Honda’s marketing people deciding to launch not one, but two variations, the…

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Old Bike Australasia (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 118

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