All this hoopla over the new VFR1200F got us thinking about the origin of the Honda V-Four species, and the fact that some of us here are able to remember its 1982 genesis, having been actual legal adults at the time.
1982: The V45s Arrive
If you think it’s strange Honda’s first V-Four wasn’t a sportbike, don’t: The sportbike as we now know it hadn’t really been invented yet. And nomenclature like “standard” and “naked bike” hadn’t either, because that’s what all motorcycles were. In the early ’80s, the Great Schism between cruiser and sportbike was just beginning, but cruisers were called “customs” then, and were selling like Levi’s Big Bells and small Ziploc baggies. (Or had been a few short years before, anyway.) Hence, Honda introduced its radical new 750cc V-Four in two guises: the V45 Magna custom (for U.S. consumption) and the V45 Sabre.
The Magna “custom” got here first, appearing in CW in May, ’82, sporting twin shocks, a pullback handlebar and other common cruiser styling touches of the day. For reference Hondas, you were looking at the CB750F (a 16-valve air-cooled inline Four), the liquid-cooled flat Four that powered the GL1000 Gold Wing, and the CBX six-cylinder of ’79. Adopting liquid cooling made the new V-Four possible; now the rear cylinders could be kept cool and, with its 90-degree Vee angle and 360-degree crank, the new engine was remarkable for its compact dimensions and smoothness, if not for outright power. The V-Four, in fact, was a way to combine the smoothness and engineering sophistication of the CBX with the kind of compactness and reliability that would ensure it a long and productive future.
Shaft drive was enough of a hint for most people to realize the Magna and Sabre weren’t really designed to be sportbikes, but like we said sportbikes hadn’t been invented yet, and motojournalists are not most people. Whatever the Magna was supposed to be didn’t keep our own Executive Editor at the time, John Ulrich, off the track: He seemed to be somehow channeling the Interceptor before it existed. Were any marketing geniuses at Honda paying attention? In the end we concluded the Magna “is a wonderful engine, an acceptable motorcycle and a hint of more marvels to come.” Prophetic, no?
Of the sportier Sabre (the VF750S in Europe) we said, in July ’82: “The engine and its smoothly rhythmic sound are the high points of the Sabre. In terms of performance, midrange torque, response, smoothness and exhaust note this is the nicest engine Honda has ever sold.”
Unfortunately, it turned out to not be the most reliable engine Honda ever sold. Some early V45s had camshaft problems due to mismatched tolerances between the bottom halves of the cam journals, which were machined into the heads, and their separately cast caps. Improper tolerances could lead to destroyed camshafts, and the whole expensive episode/scandal led to serious loss of face for Honda and its new V-Four for years to come.
Now It’s Serious: FWS1000
Brainy types had already guessed Honda had more in mind for its new engine than propelling gold-chain-swaddled Erik Estrada-types to discos and tanning salons. In 1978, Honda had returned to GP racing after a long break, throwing its oval-piston wonder NR500 four-stroke in amongst a field of highly developed two-strokes. It was, according to Kevin Cameron writing in Cycle magazine, “like going bowling with a tennis ball.”Working through “public failures that would have shriveled executives of other companies into little raisins of embarrassment,” Honda learned valuable lessons that bore fruit in the form of its all-new V-Four race machine. AMA Formula 1 racing required that major engine castings come from a homologated machine, so Honda dug deep into its swollen coffers of car money and spat out a series of handbuilt 1024cc race machines for the 1982 season: the FWS1000.
Compared to the CB750F-based F1 racer it would replace, the FWS addressed and overcame every shortcoming. Its narrow V-Four sat low in a steel-tube frame, where big water and oil radiators kept it cool and happy. Cylinders cast as part of the upper crankcase half, just like Honda’s successful GP bikes from the ’60s, kept their roundness. Mechanical losses from case flex and vibration were nil, thanks to the new engine’s perfect primary balance. And problems with cam chains were a thing of the past too, since the FWS drove its cams with gears. The smoothness of the thing meant it could be bolted into the FWS’s steel-tube frame solidly in about 12 places by both heads, cases, gearbox, etc., just as all the great ’60s Honda GP bikes had been.
Torque wasn’t going to be a problem, so a five-speed gearbox was deemed plenty, and a special clutch made up of alternating steel and copper plates could be heated nearly to the melting point of the discs without slipping; hydraulic actuation made it easy to operate anyway.
Rising-rate single-shock rear suspension with a titanium spring was the way to go; you had four-piston brakes up front and floating discs riding an anti-dive 43mm Showa fork.
Wheels with magnesium hubs, flat spokes, and aluminum rims in 16-inch front and 18-inch rear sizes completed the exotic but relatively heavy, 380-pound package. In January ’82, Kevin Cameron ballparked an early development horsepower figure of about 150, and predicted a power-to-weight ratio exactly the same as the 130-horsepower, 330-pound TZ750 factory Yamahas. He also predicted that the Honda’s much broader torque spread would make it far easier to ride out of corners, and its absence of vibration and smooth delivery would make it less taxing on its rider and tires.
He was half right. At Daytona, the factory FWSs under Freddie Spencer and Mike Baldwin opened big gaps on Kenny Roberts’ new Yamaha OW60 GP bike on the banking, with Roberts able to get some of it back in the braking zones before DNFing with a seized engine. But both Hondas shredded their Michelins on the banking: In an era when most bikes finished the 200 on a single set of tires, Spencer and Baldwin had to stop for new rears twice—and finished second and fourth anyway.
After Daytona, Freddie and KR went back to Europe to battle it out in GP, and Baldwin went on to win the AMA Formula 1 title on the FWS. Reformed motocrosser Steve Wise, in his first year of roadracing, finished second on Spencer’s bike. Not bad. Maybe this V-Four thing has legs?
Stay tuned for Part Deux (when we get around to it): The Interceptor
Continued: Honda VFR History: Part 2
