Nicest Honda Hits 50 Million!
NICEST HONDA HITS 50 MILLION!
ROUNDUP
FORGET HYDROGEN cells and methane from cow manure for a moment and think about this: As the world scrambles to conserve fuel, we sometimes forget that Honda had a perfectly good solution almost half a century ago. Their 50cc Super Cub, introduced in 1958, was capable of going 150200 miles on a gallon of gasoline.
It was also handsome and durable, with a lever-free centrifugal clutch, three-speed transmission and weather protection for the legs, and it could carry two people (or a family of five, in Vietnam) at speeds up to 40 mph.
The best part is, Honda still makes this machine, producing it in 13 different countries and selling it in more than 160, and sales just passed the 50 million mark in December of 2005. That's a world record for the production of a single model of any motor vehicle. (By way of comparison, Ford made about 16 million Model L~ T Tin Lizzies, and , Volkswagen built some 21 million vn~, I Beetles)
I’m proud to say I contributed at least one Honda 50 sale to the tally.
Okay, wait a minute,
I guess I didn’t. I bought my own Super Cub used, which doesn’t really count. Oh, well.
My own initiation into the world of small Japanese bikes came in 1964 with a Bridgestone Sport 50, also known as the “Bridgestone 7 by Rockford.” I wanted a Honda, but we had no local dealer in rural Wisconsin.
The Bridgestone was a very nice bike, and slightly quicker than a Super Cub, but it was no Honda. Nor was anything else. What the Honda had going for it, in a smokefilled, shrieking world of small Italian and Japanese ringdings, was a smooth, pleasant-sounding and almost unbreakable four-stroke engine. The two-stroke scooters and motorbikes of that era almost inevitably succumbed to piston seizures, ring wear, reed and rotary valve sealing troubles, oil/fuel ratio mistakes, sparkplug fouling, and so on. They were easy to fix if you knew how, but most people didn’t so the majority of the small two-stroke bikes in my home town ended up halfdisassembled at a comer gas station, being worked on by a mechanic who had no idea what to do next.
Not so the Hondas. They didn’t break, so you just rode them. And rode them. Observing this pattern turned me, very early, into a Four-Stroke Guy. And a Honda Man. In my future were a Super 90, CB160,
and Honda Fours of 400, 550, 750 and 600cc, along with 350 and 500 Singles and 750 and 1100 V-Fours
And, of course, that Super Cub.
I bought it in 1977 for $100 at a neighborhood garage sale and quickly con cocted a freelance story idea for Cycle World.
The big idea was that my friend John Oakey and I would take a 300-mile road trip together from Madison, Wisconsin, to Pike’s Peak, Iowa. He would ride his 10speed Stella racing bicycle, and I would take the Honda 50 (along with our tent, sleeping bags and all luggage), and we would compare the efficiency of the two vehicles.
Long story short, the Honda used 1.8 gallons of fuel in 303 miles, for an average of 168.3 mpg, at a total cost of $ 1.13. Meanwhile, John consumed $4 worth of granola bars, fruit and energy drinks, none of which I needed. John was incredulous at the Honda's low fuel consumption. "You can't make a gas tank leak that slowly' he said, "much f~ less run a vehicle"
Wenowknowit takes about 1 calorie of oil to produce a single : calorie of unprocessed food in the U.S.-and 4 to 10 calories of oil to manufacture processed food (such as a granola bar)-so you might say the Honda won, big time.
And it's still out there, win ning. Somewhere, Mr. Honda is smiling. Along with 50 million others. -Peter Egan
