Honda Fury
HONDA FURY
More curious than furious, Honda's new chopper is actually a pretty nice motorcycle
JOHN BURNS
TED, WHO LIVES ACROSS the street, quit drinking for awhile there. Then one morning I spotted the ruddier, wobblier, happier Ted of yore rolling his trash cans to the curb, barefoot and in his trademark shorts, plastic cup in hand. "Dammit Ted," I said, "I thought you were on the wagon."
"Well," says Ted with a shrug of the shoulders and a roll of the eyeballs, "It turns out drinking's not what's wrong with me. So I started up again."
There it is. In just the same logical way, I thought I didn't like choppers. But maybe I was just unclear as to cause and effect. The truth is I just don't like loud, obnoxious things that call attention to themselves and make me feel ridiculous by association, and the only choppers I've ridden have been loud, dysfunctional, stressful drama machines that require way too much attention. I'm an introvert at heart, see, with occasional flashes of extrover sion that reveal themselves only in print.
CYCLE WORLD TEST
It never occurred to me that a chopper could be a useful, friendly, engaging thing to ride-but that almost exactly describes the new Honda Fury. Maybe I'm just infatu ated since I've only been riding it for a week, but I don't think so. I was pre disposed to despise the thing and heckle it. But I'm forced to admit I like it. T..___~__11 1 .I_ _ _~_. T _1_i .1~_ T'
Ironically enough, the day after I picked the Fury up at the Cycle World offices, my presence was required at a meeting at Honda's U.S. HQ, 40 miles up the 405 Freeway. Dang, I thought, can I ride this thing that far without catastrophic injury? I'd left my trusty ZX-9 beater at CW, and my only other transpo was four-wheeled. It looked like rain, too. The fear of physi cal discomfort, in the end (so to speak), outweighed the certainty of a dismal rushhour crawl if I took my truck, so I dug out my trusty Aerostich suit.
About 10 miles out, it occurred to me I was enjoying the ride and not really in any sort of pain at all. Even though my feet were stuck out ahead of me, the coccyx, prostatal and lumbar departments were registering no complaints, and the hands were having no trou ble hanging onto the grips as we cruised sweetly along in the carpool lane between 60 and 80 miles per in happy aerodynamic neutrality. Soon I was admiring the play of blue sky and clouds in the Fury's shiny headlight nacelle and reveling in my place in the wonderful U.S. economy as I scurried along with all the other commuters. Positive steering manners and a not-too-wide handlebar make the Fury a fine lane-splitting tool, too.
When I met up with my associ ates-a bunch of techy new-media type advertising guys-they were impressed I was able to handle such a menacing, manly piece of equipment. I didn't tell them their grandmothers would have no trouble riding the Fury; the seat's ) like 26 inches from the pavement, and every thing about it is as easy as driving a new Accord. Easier. New cars have way too many controls. 4:-La-
At Honda's proving grounds out in the Mojave, they recreated a section of Los Angeles' notoriously bumpy 110 Freeway, complete with authentic signage. After my meeting ended, I headed north and rode the Fury over the real McCoy. Not so bad, not so bad at all; the Fury's cantilever-mounted shock gives you a hydraulic preload adjuster you can twist with your hand once you pop off the right sidecover, and rebound damping is adjustable also. It works, so does the seat; the thing actually soaks up bumps reasonably well. I was so inspired I nearly kept going right up to L.A.'s twisty Angeles Crest Highway, and I would've done it but it looked like rain up there so I turned around instead to see what Ted was up to.
It's a really nice bike, so Honda naturally wants to market the thing as a bad-ass chopper, with a website full of lightning and broken glass and fists and people screaming. The Fury is, in fact, about as menacing and furious as a piece of apple pie ala mode at the Woolworth's lunch counter with your new goldfish next to you in a baggy. If you could flip the seat up and store things under it (and you didn't have to shift gears), it'd be the coolest scooter ever. Blake Conner says they should call it the Furby. The Fury is what you would line up to ride if Disneyland had an Easy Rider Experience.
With its 71.2-inch wheelbase, the Fury is the longest bike Honda's ever produced (requiring the everresourceful Don Canet to shorten it by cinching the forks all the way down to get the rear wheel onto the dyno drum). And the forks are raked way out there at 38 degrees, so it does have that authentic chopper look. Honda (and Yamaha with its Raider), however, used the old chopper chop of raking the fork tubes out farther than the steering head, so that the actual trail (which as we all know is the measurement that really affects steering effort, I think) is a very reasonable 3.5 inches. Honda's sportbikes all have more trail than that, and the result is a chopper that steers like a normal streetbike, albeit a really long one. The Fury's front end never wants to flop into turns or stand up, it steers perfectly neutral. The skinny front tire also lightens steering, while the fact that it's 21 inches tall gives plenty of high-speed stability. Not that there's that much high speed; the Fury's computer enforces a strict lights-out policy at 100 mph.
It doesn't exactly accelerate all that hard, either, but I'm convinced that if a thing handles as unpredict ably as most choppers, it's good if the fork tubes have time to unwind and decompress in the unpredictable interval between when you open up the 250-horsepower Merch V-Twin and when it responds, giving one valuable time to reach the jockey shifter in between Bott's Dots so as not to upset the hardtail chassis. In other words, speed is not of the essence when riding a Lasixed-up, blind-in-one-eye thoroughbred.
Wait, that's other choppers... The Fury is just the opposite, with a sweet VTX 1300 Twin that steps up to the plate and makes 70 foot-pounds of torque just off-idle, and continues to make that much until it signs off a few thousand rpm later. Predictable and easy to use, fast enough-and the Honda engineers even found a way to give it a really respectable rumble. Right, they could've plugged in a bigger engine, but that's been done, hasn't it? And then you wind up with a thing that needs a tug boat to back out of the garage, like the Rune. Relative light weight is another thing the Fury has going for it, which along with its way-low seat, makes it nice and easy to maneuver.
Loud is probably good if you're one of the one percent of Americans who still live on a farm and you need to alert the moose or whatever. As for the rest of us, with neighbors, not so much. Most choppers that visit my house are done for the day once the sun goes down and the neighbor hood kids are in bed. With the Fury, it doesn't matter what time it is when the Bat Light shines; you can fire the thing up and meet your mates for last call if you want to, without waking every dog on the block and setting off all the car alarms. That alone makes it way more functional than any chopper I can recall "testing."
But the main nice thing about the Fury is its clean look: Jesse James of West Coast Choppers fame had a hand in its design and it shows. Honda couldn't resist putting some scream ing heads and angry imagery on its website, but they at least managed to not put any skulls or crossbones or tribal graphics or flames on the bike-just one little "Honda" and stylized "Fury" on the rear fender. Other than that, you've got your basic twin downtube steel frame with an aluminum swingarm, topped off with a really nice custom-looking steel fuel tank. Shaft drive looks like it belongs on a chopper; it's simple and clean and makes you think it's too bad they didn't stick a drum brake inside that big rear hub too. Okay, too bad about the radiator...
And if you like chromed plastic (and who doesn't?) you came to the right place. The head light nacelle I so admired is plastic, the instrument housing is plastic, the big "panhead" engine covers are plastic, the airbox stuck between the cylinders is plastic, the big round clutch cover is plastic-in fact, every piece of chrome on the bike is plas tic except the exhaust pipes. And the fenders are plastic too. Maybe that's a good thing? Plastic's light, it doesn't pit like chromed steel and it'll outlast us all.
Well, they had to do something to keep the cost down to $13,000, didn't they? Heck, for that kind of money, if you wanted a cool custom chopper but not a Honda, you could probably bolt some aftermarket monster motor into the Fury's cool chassis and still be way ahead of the game financially. Then you could put on straight pipes, get a leather vest, fingerless gloves, fringed chaps and a chrome Nazi hel met-and you'd be easy to avoid from
miles away, just how we like it. As delivered, though, this Fury is the friendliest, nicest chopper in town, the golden retriever of two-wheeled anti-establishment symbols, the chopper for people who thought they didn't like choppers at all. Who knew?
EDITORS' NOTES
I LIKE THE CUT OF THE FuRY's jig; IT'S like a wheeled lawn chair, the ultimate suburban accessory, showy but unob trusively so. It's an adult Big Wheel, all close to the ground, and you don't have to pedal. If the cops weren't so touchy around here, I would like to roll the Fury up to the third base line and watch Little League baseball. It could be good in a Fourth of July parade.
Now that Mean, Nasty and Loud are no longer fashion able, it feels right to step in and fill the void with a surge of niceness, aboard a moto that encourages little kids to come closer and like motorcycles, even this kind of motorcycle. A Harley guy even waved at me. But mostly this: I rolled out on the Fury the other night to meet my mate for a late nosh, then raced her old Toyota pickup home. She said I looked sexy on the Fury, dead sexy-and she's normally a sportbike girl. There it is. This bike could get you some love. Hello. -John Burns, Con tributing Editor
BEFORE HEADING OUT TO THE GARAGE, I pulled on my 25-year-old black biker boots, appropriate leather jacket and jeans, then threw a leg over Honda's Fury. Despite the raked-out custom sil houette, I still felt like I was hopping on Disneyland's It a Small World instead of a flame-puking, eardrum-shatter ing chopper. Blame that damn vintage Honda ad hanging in the Cycle World
men's room, proclaiming, "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." I just can't seem to get the image of Biff and Buffy riding to the tennis club out of my head. Biker bulletin: Cardigans and white Jack Purcells are not badass.
Honda is working awfully hard to gain that grease-underthe-fingernails image via its online viral ad campaign, com plete with pulsing counterculture imagery. Great bike, guys, but I still don't buy into the image. Besides, that demonic Fury logo would be way more comfortable on the cover of Slayer's next album than on a plastic fender. -Blake Conner, Associate Editor
As THE STAFF CHOPPER NERD (FoRKus maximus), I have to say I was skeptical. My `69 Triumph Bonnie is a proppa choppa; the Fury is, well. . .chopperish. My Bonnie is a kidney-squishing hardtail; the Fury floats down the avenue on rear suspension. My Bonnie goes about its chores unencumbered by a front brake; the Fury is all disc'd-up. My Bonnie has a cloud-scratcher exhaust I •f~ _________._1____ I-'
that brings on headaches, if not outright nausea; the Fury is EPA and DOT A-OK. My Bonnie has to be prodded and cajoled to life with genuine boot leather; the Fury asks noth ing more than a caressing thumb. My Bonnie's twin carbs demand to be tickled before they'll pass gas; the Fury's fuel injection snaps-to, doing exactly what its electronic control module orders. My Bonnie has 50 gold-plated metal pieces (hey, it was the `70s), now faded to a mellow, almost-nickel finish; the Fury has, er, plasti-chrome.
Okay, points to the Bonnie on the last item, but truth is, if the original choppers worked half as well as this Fury does, they'd never have gone extinct in the first place. -David Edwards, Editor-in-Chief
HONDA FURY
$12,999
