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Chamber of epitaphs
Honda should be grateful that Guido has yet to order a DN-01…
Hero or goose. That seems to be the epitaph awaiting the designer who convinces a motorcycle manufacturer to stick their corporate neck out on a configuration that everyone knows is just a little bit ‘out there’. Something the market is not buying at the moment, but just might, given the right timing and motivation.
What brought this to mind was the Honda DN-01 we’ve featured this issue. As the road test explains, the components aren’t necessarily radical, but the sum total is to some extent.
Honda has a history of playing on the outer edge, with its most famously successful example being the CB750-Four of 1968-69. Even then, four-cylinder motorcycles were far from new, but the way the company packaged the beast was. And it worked. They beat the competition to effectively creating a new niche and turned performance motorcycling on its head in the process.
The DN-01 is potentially in a similar situation. These days, getting reliable high performance is hardly an issue. Instead, what this bike is about is a relatively simple brief – providing an automatic cruiser. Too easy? Well, when you think about it, there isn’t anything else out there.
About the closest you’ll get is Suzuki’s 650 Burgman scooter, which has certainly found a market among Ulysses Club folk. But it’s a scooter rather than a motorcycle. There are those who will not be seen on one – I can count youngest unmarried Ms A among them – and they would in fact rather walk, if that were the only alternative.
So Honda has gone for a motorcycle, with the twist of an automotive rather than scooter-style stepless auto trans. Even fitting a car-style auto is not new, as Honda itself tried it with a two-speed version on the CB750. It was not a roaring success. The DN-01’s transmission is another technological step or three up the evolutionary scale, but the intention is similar.
And when you think about it, an auto cruiser makes a fair bit of sense. After all, what is the whole point behind a cruiser? Surely it’s to be able to hop aboard and, errr, cruise with the minimum of fuss. In this case you jump on, stab one button to get it fired up, and a second to get Drive, then twist the throttle to go. That’s it. To me, it makes all kinds of sense, while in reality it’s a sweetheart to ride.
Now, are you beginning to sense the catch? There are a couple. One is motorcyclists are famously suspicious of anything that smells vaguely revolutionary. That doesn’t mean they won’t adopt new ideas, but they tend to do so slowly. Fuel injection seemed to take forever to get off the ground. Heck, even motorcycles with more than two cylinders took years to shake off the “car with two wheels missing” accusation.
In the case of the DN-01, timing will be everything. The company may well be right that there is a market for the product, but is it now or in a few years’ time and are they prepared to wait?
Perhaps they should draw comfort from one early non-sale. As much as I and partner Ms M ended up liking the DN-01, we have yet to place an order. That could have been a kiss of death. You see our shed has more than its fair share of epitaphs to courageous engineers.
Exhibit A is Winston the 1947 Sunbeam. It was designed by a certain Mr Erling Poppe, who set out to create the ultimate gentleman’s tourer, effectively a car on two wheels. Yep, that was the language used at the time. What Sunbeam’s owners didn’t think through was that Mr Poppe was better known for his work on buses.
Surprisingly, the end result was a particularly handsome piece of machinery, though a hefty price, sluggish performance and questions over reliability eventually killed it off. It developed into a second model, the S8, but never really got volume sales.
Exhibit B, yer honour, is Casper the GTS1000 Yamaha. This has the RADD front end from a certain James Parker of the USA, attached to what Yamaha billed as its ultimate tour de force when it came to sports touring motorcycles. It had the five-valve FZ-series powerplant, ABS, catalytic converter, a unique frame, and pretty much everything else the company could throw at it. Priced at around $22k in 1993, it was just too expensive and a little too weird to catch on.
Somehow, that corner of the shed is at risk of developing into a chamber of epitaphs. So perhaps Honda should be pleased we’ve yet to put down a deposit on a DN-01, tempting though it is. It really deserves better…
You’re always welcome to get in touch (and send counsellors) via the palatial MT offices at locked bag 12, Oakleigh 3166; Or on the wire at guy.allen@traderclassifieds.com.au.
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