Cw 25 Years Ago May, 1965

CW 25 YEARS AGO May, 1965

ROUNDUP

THE HOT STORY IN THIS ISSUE was titled, “Exclusive Details: Honda 450," and told of the unveiling of an eagerly

awaited new Honda which featured a two-cylinder engine with double-overhead cams, torsion-bar valve springs, electric starting and a claimed output of 44 horsepower. With an estimated top speed of more than l10 miles per hour, the CB450 would, the story predicted, outrun many European, i.e. British, 650s. The story was right.

Equally interesting was a piece called “Moto Güera, a Study of Speed," which detailed the history of the Italian motorcycle company and its racing efforts. The featured bike was the Gilera-Rodene. and though considered complex and exotic when it was built in 1936, it sounds, in some ways, rather like contemporary equipment. Its engine, a liquid-cooled inline-Four,

featured double-overhead, gear-driven camshafts and a supercharger. Horsepower was a claimed 90 at 10,000 rpm. Top speed was 151 miles per hour. The Rodene’s chassis was just as trick as its engine. A stamped-steel girder fork was frictiondamped. A strangelooking pivoting arm, also friction damped, suspended the rear

wheel. And the frame, a tubularsteel job, wrapped around the perimeter of the engine, in the manner of today’s sportbike frames. Can it be that the more things change, the more they stay the same? —Ron Griewe