HONDA has applied for trademarks on a couple of names that might ring a bell if you're over a certain age.
First is the name 'Raiden'. A bit of an obscurity, this one. Originally it was a naked version of the NSR125R, sold from 1992-94 in just a few markets around the world. Not a misspelling of Raider but a term for thunder or the thunder god in Japanese, we really don't know what bike, if any, the revived Raiden name will be applied to. But since the new CBR250R is arguably a successor to the NSR125R, perhaps Raiden would be an appropriate title for the rumoured naked version of that machine.
The second re-trademarked badge is much more familiar: it's 'ATC'. Now it might not have been a motorcycle as such, but the original Honda ATC is the classic balloon-tyred, three-wheeled predecessor of today's quad bikes.
Although the originals sold for well over a decade from 1970 until the mid-1980s, given the dire warnings of instability that eventually saw trikes entirely replaced by four-wheeled quad bikes it's hard to imagine Honda is planning to re-introduce the ATC in anything like its original form.
