Brighton Rock!

It’s half a century since the Honda CB750 Four was launched in the seaside town, and that original bike still exists. John Nutting records its story

- John Nutting

British bike fans got their first look at Honda’s fabulous CB750 Four at the Brighton Show 50 years ago this month.

It was a momentous occasion, with anticipation fuelled by reports from Japan and America that the machine would establish the superbike era with a combination of performance and reliability previously thought unattainable.

A few months earlier, BSA-Triumph’s 750cc triples and Norton’s 750cc Commando twin had made their debut. The CB750, however, a prototype of which had appeared at the Tokyo Show six months earlier, was in a different league, featuring an overhead-camshaft four-cylinder five speed engine, self-starting and a hydraulic disc brake, all of which made the British bikes seem ancient in comparison. Talk was that the new Honda had a top speed of 125mph and unparalleled refinement.

By the time the CB750 appeared at Brighton, demand for it was almost at fever pitch. Yet it had been less than two years since the Honda factory had quit Grand Prix racing, and company president Soichiro Honda had decided to capture the glory of its racing bikes and offer a similar road bike. Honda’s biggest road bike at the time was its CB450 DOHC twin, which, although capable of giving the mostly British 650cc twins sold in the US a run for their money, was nonetheless regarded as a bit of a toy. The CB450 wasn’t a ‘big bike’.