HONDA has come in for a bit of stick recently with murmurs that its bikes, while still just as accomplished as ever they were, lack some of the sparkle of earlier generations.
That really depends on your point of view and priorities, but there’s no denying that the firm has teased us in the past with some magnificent concept bikes that have since disappeared without trace. Weirdly, some of Honda’s craziest concepts have reached production, for better or worse. The NR750, for instance, went from 1989 concept to 1992 production, and remains magnificent to this day. The DN-01 also started life as a concept. Well, you can’t win them all.
Then there have been wacky wonders like the Rune, and indeed the lovely-looking CB1100, which have similarly achieved the leap from concept to production, in both cases with virtually no alterations.
So we know Honda has the wherewithal and the balls to turn concepts to reality. And that means the bikes in this list likely came within a whisker of making it to showrooms. Here’s what you could have had…