Fab At 50!

Honda’s 750 Four set the world alight when it appeared in 1968 to establish the Superbike age. John Nutting rides one of the earliest examples to sample the sound and the glory.

- John Nutting

It’s hard to imagine now just how huge was the impact created by the launch of Honda’s CB750 at the Tokyo Automobile Show in October 1968.

Fifty years on we’re accustomed to four-cylinder motorcycles, but back then they were extreme rarities, and no more than novelties that few, usually well-off, riders had experience of. But the CB750 was much more than that, because it would offer the everyday rider access to a new era of exotic motorcycles with phenomenal performance at a price that was not much more than the new crop of high-performance machine. We’d been primed with the 750cc triples from BSA-Triumph, and Norton’s refined Commando 750, both appearing in 1968, but the CB750 took motorcycle technology to a new level.

A year or so earlier, Honda had been winning world road-racing championships with works-entered fours and sixes, yet here was a bike with four exhaust pipes that captured the sound and the glory. It breathed performance, yet offered sophistication with overhead camshafts, a five-speed gearbox, press-button starting, huge instruments, a hydraulically operated disc brake and the promise of the same Honda reliability as its smaller twins such as the CB72 and CB450.

The CB750 was a game changer, and within a decade the British machines were history, the other three Japanese factories had upped the ante with their own even quicker machines and fours were the norm.

I was reminded just how advanced the CB750 was for its time with a ride on an early example that emerged from the factory in September 1969, less than a year after the model’s launch. Owned by Chris Rushton, this CB750 with just over 16,000 miles on the clock and untouched Candy Ruby Red paintwork is in original condition apart from its Continental tyres. With a frame number 1008054, it has a die-cast engine and was made six months after production started in Japan.