Original Honda CB750

All the across-the-frame four-cylinder Hondas that have monopolized motorcycle sales throughout the world on and off since the 1970s owe their existence to the CB750 introduced in 1968. The 750 thereafter uniquely influenced motorcycle design and possibly the very concept of motorcycling, in the case of all the major manufacturers, and not Honda alone. Although the Japanese companies had effectively changed the face of motorcycling in Europe and the USA in the years up to 1968 with a multitude of well-engineered models, their success had been, in the main, achieved through a painstaking process of improving and elaborating on the traditional outline of the motorcycle as laid down long before by the established makers of Italy and Britain. The CB750 changed all that. This was no careful, uprated, well-made variation on an antique theme. It was well made, all right, but overwhelmingly it was new. Revolutionary, some people said - and it is easy even today to see what they meant. It had a