Underpowered?

This should work.

I sat on one a few months ago. Beautiful bike, very heavy and they had knocked the price down from $27K to $17K. A lot of $$ for me but it had me drooling. I was stopped next to one this summer as well. The dude had 6 into 6. Wow, talk about the sound of power. Crazy!!
 
Next generation? LOL! Honda quite making that thing years ago- it was a complete sales flop, and there are brand new ones still sitting on the crates unsold 4-5 years after production stopped. Not one of their better ideas.
 
Honda does that - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

This kind of goofball thinking on their part created the CB750 inline 4; and all the experts said it couldn't be done.

and by the way, I couldn't get through to that web page either.
 
Honda haardly invented the inline 4 motorcycle, though they ceertainly hit a home run bringing it to the masses in an affordable, reliable motorcycle. The Rune was a rare swing-and-a-miss.
 
Fixed the link.
I just found it odd that a 6 cyl engine was being held to 1800cc and 90hp.
It IS a big bike, close to 100 lb heavier than the C109.
 
The Gold Wing can easily smoke off the rear tire, or pull wheelies even with a passenger and fully loaded saddlebags, so the motor is just fine the way it is. The 6-cylinder was intended to make lots of torque across a nice flat power band, and to be insanely smooth at all speeds for long distance touring. A larger motor, or even a hotter version of the same motor, would require larger radiators, and the Gold Wing designers are already having trouble hiding the existing radiators. The Rune took a Gold Wing motor and boosted low and mid-range torque at the expense of high RPM torque (HP is irrelevant). Honda could have made a larger version of the motor just for the Rune, but that would have pushed the price from "ridiculous" all the way up to the "WTF?" range. It was never intended as a performance bike anyways- it was a rolling sculpture, aimed at the folks who buy $30K custom bikes. The problem being, of course, that it was a regular production bike anyone could buy, so there was nothing really custom about it, and those willing to shell out $30K for rolling sculpture don't want it to say "Honda" on the side.

I see your point though- if Honda really wanted to make a performance machine, the six cylinder motor has a lot of potential that 1800ccs and 90HP barely scratch the surface of. But buyers rejected the Honda Valkyrie, Suzuki Madura, and other performance cruisers that did not have the traditional v-twin engine, so a high-performance version of the 6 cylinder is simply not something Honda is interested in.
 
I got to see one this summer also. A guy came riding in to the shop I was working at to look at some lawn mowers. He said it had been sitting on the show room floor at his dealer for a couple years and he got a deal on it. I was surprised at the performance numbers. I thought they would have been higher. It did look cool tho.:bluethum:
 
And some how the V-max reached legendary status. Just interesting that it managed to do so well. And the Magna faired a little better than the Valkyrie did.
 
V-max is a standard, and was never marketed to cruiser buyers. That's they key- put the tight power plant in the right bike for the right people. Suzuki built the VX800, a standard with a absolutely wonderful v-twin engine. It was a complete failure, and dealers could hardly give them away. But the next year the same motor went into the VS800, a small cruiser, which is still a good seller almost 20 years later. Same motor, different buyers, different set of expectations.
Hell, even Harley made this mistake, sinking millions of dollars into a line of modular water-cooled, overhead-cam engines in the late 1970s, which were to be sold on 400 and 500cc twins, 800 and 1000cc v-fours, and 1200 and 1500 cc v-six sizes. This, in turn, required the design of a whole new line of bikes, rather ugly creatures to say the least. But they did have under seat radiators, and scoops next to the fuel tank to feed air to them- giving the bikes a somewhat 'v-max' like look years before the v-max. Anyways, after more than 5 years, a dozen prototype bikes, and over 100,000 miles of testing, the marketing people finally chimed in that no one would buy the new bikes: those looking for a high-tech bike did not want a Harley, and those wanting a Harley expected a big air-cooled V-twin. By all reports the new motors were pretty decent, and a 1500cc, overhead cam, water cooled motor pushing out 135 HP would be at home in a GoldWing today, let alone in 1980. But it was not the right motor to put into bikes aimed at their target market, so the Evolution motor and Softail frame were chosen for production. The rest is history: Harley has an 80% market share in the cruiser segment with their big v-twins, and non-v-twin motored cruisers are a novelty. Harley did eventually develop the Revolution water-cooled twin for the V-Rod, but this non-traditional bike continues to be Harley's poorest seller.
 
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