2004 Vtx 1300
2004 VTX 1300
CYCLE WORLD TEST
Honda offer cruiser buyers a choice: Brute power and bulk, or adequacy snd balance. You may be surprised which you prefer.
STEVE ANDERSON
IF HONDA'S MEGA-CRIJISER VTX1 800C is a "sumo ballerina," what does that make its close cousin, the new-for - 2004 VTX 1 300C? A heavyweight tap dancer? A not-so-large Marge? A solid second? Strangely enough, horsepower alone doesn’t guarantee a top place for the biggest VTX. If the 1800 is all about Big Twin overkill, the VTX 1300 is about Big Twin balance.
Honda’s largest V-Twin holds records for not only low-rpm power and torque, but poundage as well. At 754 pounds full of gas, the 1800 scales-in fully a hundred pounds heavier than a Harley Softail. It also wears exceptionally large tires for a cruiser, a 180/70-16 on the back and 130/70-18 on the front. Even its wheelbase is prodigious at 67.6 inches. Honda took this country’s appetite for excess into account when it came up with the 1800-and added a little more.
For some of us, however, when it came to the 1800, our eyes were bigger than our bellies.
You can’t ride the 1800 without being constantly reminded of its scale. The bike not only accelerates hard, it demands muscle everywhere else, as well. Turning the brute summons up visions of WWI super cannons, with an entire company of men cranking away, a long geartrain spinning rapidly to slowly, slowly tum a huge turret. Overstatement, of course, but it comes to mind simply because scale and weight do matter in motorcycles, and at some point too much is just that.
Honda’s twin Twins can help define for each rider when a cruiser reaches that point. The two are very closely related, sharing an engine design, a number of components and a look that is so similar that you may have to read the numbers on the side to make sure which is which. But though the variations may be subtle, they collectively add up to a substantial subjective difference.
First, the 1300 is lighter, moving the needle on the scales about 60 pounds less than does its big brother-though you’d swear while sitting on the 1300 that the difference was even greater. Those pounds come directly from the slightly altered hardware of the two machines. The 1800 wears a 45mm inverted front fork; the 1300 makes do with a 41mm conventional fork. With nearly 90 horsepower, the 1800 relies on a twin-disc front brake for stopping power; with less than 60 horses, the 1300 gets perfectly adequate stopping ability with a single front disc. The 1800, with 900cc cylinders and a stroke approaching 402 inches, requires a split-pin crank, a counterbalancer and rubber mounts to keep vibration under control; the 1300 relies on a classical (and lighter) single-crankpin crankshaft and a pair of counterbalancers. Wheelbase shrank almost 2 inches for the 1300 to 65.5, and the wheels and tires have been downsized, with an almost svelte 110/90-19 on the front and a 170/8015 on the back.
The combination of 8 percent less weight, narrower tires and a shorter wheelbase transform the handling feel of the 1300. It’s supremely stable, preferring straight down the road to any other direction, but it’s not ponderous, either. The wide handlebar provides plenty of leverage to lean the Honda over quickly, and it tracks a line in a comer nearly as well as it goes straight. You can bend far over (by cruiser standards) negotiating an on-ramp before the pegs touch down, and the 1300 does nothing to raise your blood pressure in the process. In comers, the 1300 radiates confidence and reassurance.
On the highway, the VTX has the riding position that’s quickly becoming cruiser-standard: pegs forward far enough that you can stretch out your legs, but with knees still bent. Butt low, so it’s easy to get your feet flat on the ground, and so that it’s easy to maneuver what remains a heavy bike at slow speeds. Hands wide and forward enough that you sit just shy of upright, encouraging a slight slouch and a comfortably curved spine as you go down the road. Of course, if this riding position is becoming more common, it’s because it works better at modem highway speeds than the more traditional cruiser reclined position given by a handlebar with more rise and backsweep.
Contributing to highway comfort is a supremely relaxed engine. Honda could have maintained much of the power of the 1800 had its engineers simply shortened its stroke and raised the rev ceiling at the same time to create the 1300. Instead, the 1300 engine is all about feel, not peak numbers. Most of the stroke of the 1800 was maintained, with a 7.7mm reduction still leaving more than 4 inches of piston travel. Bore size was reduced more, about a half-inch, from 101mm to 89mm. As would be expected with such a long-stroke, mildly tuned engine, the powerband starts early, at 2000 rpm, and torque peaks at about 3000.
The engine revs out to about 6200, but power peaks by 5000, and short-shifting is definitely encouraged. The V-Twin will pull top gear by 3000 rpm. and roll-on performance feels much better than you might expect with only 56 horses at peak. That’s because you’re sitting near the torque peak in top gear at highway speeds.
As for character, the single crankpin gives the 1300 the syncopated beat familiar to any Harley rider, and if you set the idle speed down a bit from recommended, you even get the loping, chaotic idle of a pre-Twin-Cam Harley Big Twin-a strange attractor indeed.
In acceleration, the 1300 offers adequacy rather than hot-rod might. With a quartermile time in the high-13s, the small VTX is far from the I800’s low-12-second performance. But most of the time, you find yourself not caring. The engine rumbles pleasantly, the power pulses and subtle thumping translating into pleasurable rather than annoying vibration. It lulls you along down the road, and responds well when you ask it for more. No, the VTX 1300 is not about the exhilaration of the power-cruiser, but instead about the more subtle pleasures that made cruisers popular in the first place. And Honda seems to have studied those thoroughly, because some of the sensations coming from the 1300 seem positively un-Honda. Ever notice how control efforts in Honda cars keep getting lighter and lighter, as they have as well in Honda’s top CBR sportbikes? Well, that trend is thoroughly broken with this VTX. Oh, it’s not that they ve gone to a mid-Eighties Harley death-grip brake, or some vintage Dell’Orto-equipped Ducati's manly throttle twist.
But the shift lever requires a firm push or pull, and snaps into place with a precision and sound that’s simply atypical—refreshingly atypical-for a Honda. Similarly, the big handgrips on the 1-inch-bar fit big hands best; there’s no question that the VTX is a masculine machine, and no question that’s exactly what Honda wanted it to be.
In appearance, the 1300 keeps the hot-rod styling of the 1800. but tones it down just slightly with a few more traditional elements, such as the less wide tires or the staggered dual exhausts replacing the bazooka of the bigger VTX.
Both machines reflect Honda’s mining of American culture and the streamlined designs of the 1930s. Honda stylists went back to the roots, understanding where American custom styling came from, rather than slavishly copying the most successful purveyor of that styling in Milwaukee.
Relatively few functional compromises were required to get the 1300's Look. With only 3.6 inches of rear-wheel travel (important to keep that seat height low), the VTX rides a little harshly over large or particularly sharp bumps, though it’s noticeably smooth over the minor irregularities encountered on non-frost-heaved highways. (The tail-section tires likely have more than a little to do with that.) And while the streamlined instrument pod on the gas tank is beautiful, would it be too much to ask for a tach as well? And. of course, the side-mounted ignition key compels a separate lock on the steering head, and two separate key insertions before getting underway.
These are relatively minor complaints, perhaps not surprising for a machine that hugs the center of the road, far from the extremes of some of Honda’s other models. The Rune is much more radically styled: the VTX 1800 is far more powerful. But the 1300 strikes a balance. It’s comfortable. It handles solidly and securely. It’s heavy enough to be a heavy cruiser, but not so weighty to continually challenge your strength. Its engine is characterful and charismatic. It looks good. It’s a cruiser of subtle pleasures, and no extremes.
And it may be the best cruiser that Honda has yet built. □
HONDA
VTX1300C
$9299
