#Honda

It’s a new year which means it’s time once again for the world’s most grueling off-road endurance race, the Dakar Rally. Celebrating its 40th edition, the 2018 Dakar Rally runs Jan. 6-20, starting in Lima, Peru, crossing into Bolivia with a rest day in La Paz, and then entering Argentina for the finish line at Cordoba.

Since 1958, Honda has produced more than 100 million Super Cubs. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Super Cub, Honda released a video showing how they are assembled at its factory in Kumamoto, Japan.

American roadracer Jake Gagne has signed on as a rider for Honda’s Red Bull Superbike team to contest the 2018 FIM Superbike World Championship. Gagne, 24, joins the team full-time after filling the seat vacated by the late, great Nicky Hayden as a wild-car rider three times in the 2017 WSB season. His best results were a trio of 12th-place finishes.

UPDATE: Honda has now released a higher-quality video of the race in its entirety. Check it out below.

What does adventure mean to you? Wait, let me narrow that down: What does adventure motorcycling mean to you? Maybe your idea of adventure on a motorcycle is setting out, destination unknown with nothing but a paper map and the Blue Highways to guide you. Or maybe, to you, adventure means setting out across the American southwest with a few friends in tow, using trails and highways to connect yourself to our vast array of spectacular national parks. Perhaps your sense of adventure riding involves knobby tires, an ever-changing trail system of sand washes and fish tacos as you make your way down the Baja peninsula.

This news slipped under our radar last month, but when the Kawasaki Ninja 400‘s European debuted at EICMA, the World Superbike Championship announced the new model will be eligible to race in the series’ relatively new World Supersport 300 class.

The final installment of this year’s diatribe should, one thinks, start with an examination of the season preview from back in February. Heading into Qatar, the conventional thinking was that Maverick Viñales, newly and firmly ensconced on the factory Yamaha, the best bike on earth of late, would challenge triple world champion Marc Marquez and his Repsol Honda – you remember, the one with the acceleration issues – for the world championship.

If there’s one thing we learned during our 2018 450cc motocross shootout, it’s this: When it comes to building the best 450cc motocross machine, one that excels on all tracks and in all conditions, no bike is ever perfect for everyone.

Have I died and gone to motorcycle heaven? Pretty much. EICMA is the world’s biggest motorcycle trade show; anyone and everyone who has anything to do with motorcycling is there. From all the OEMs, to aftermarket performance parts manufacturers to riding gear and apparel companies – it’s all there in unimaginable abundance. I was tasked to sniff out the top five coolest things at EICMA this year and thought – well, that ought to be easy! Boy was I mistaken…

All season long, we at MO have been chanting the mantra, “Let Valencia Decide.” With the title unsettled heading into the weekend, the opportunity for a riveting finale existed (if only mathematically), Marc Marquez holding a 21 point lead over Ducati pilot Andrea Dovizioso as the riders lined up on the grid. The math caught up with Dovi on Lap 25 when, desperate to get past insubordinate teammate Jorge Lorenzo, he ran hot into Turn 8, ultimately laying his GP17 down gently in the gravel. And so the 2017 title was awarded at Valencia, having been decided some weeks earlier.

So, 2017 has all come down to this – a technical showdown between Repsol Honda studmuffin Marc Marquez, gripping a 21-point lead, and a determined Andrea Dovizioso, virtually hopeless onboard the Ducati GP17, for all the marbles on Sunday. Even if Dovi wins, Marquez has to finish worse than 11th in order to choke this one away. To clarify, it is a showdown in only the most technical, theoretical sense. It will take a Dovizioso win and direct intervention by the racing gods to keep Marc Marquez from MotoGP title #4 on Sunday.

Sometimes OEMs just like to show off how cool they are, and this year, Honda featured the work of its R&D facility in Rome. The featured project was this tasty-looking CB4 ‘Interceptor’ Concept.

While we don’t know if either the 2018 Honda CB125R or the 2018 Honda CB300R will make it to the American shores, they were announced today at EICMA in Milan. Sharing a family resemblance with the also-just-introduced 2018 Honda CB1000R, the little CBs are also a product of Honda’s Neo-Sports Café Concept.

Where were you on November 5th, 2013? I can’t remember, but if you’re an NC700X fan, like many of us here at MO, you may remember it as the day the European market got an upgraded bike – but those of us here in the USA didn’t. Well, better late than never, because American Honda announced the NC750X as a USA model, with all the improvements and new features of the Euro-bike.

The Honda CB1000R, a legendary model from the company, had its latest iteration, the 2018 Honda CB1000R, unveiled today at EICMA in Milan. To escort the CB1000R onto stage for its debut was none other than five-time world champion Mick Doohan – a Honda legend in his own right.