This is probably the closest you’ll ever get to owning a Honda RC174

Built by George Beale using factory drawings and with Honda’s cooperation, this RC174 replica recreates one of the most technically outrageous race bikes of the 1960s.

Simon Hancocks

23 Jan 2026

For most of us, owning a Honda RC174 is pure fantasy. That actual motorcycle, which Mike ‘The Bike’ Hailwood rode to the 1967 350cc world title, lives firmly behind museum ropes and in black-and-white photographs.

But this auction listing represents about as close as reality gets.

What’s going under the hammer is a George Beale-built Honda RC174 replica, completed in 2004, and crucially, it’s not a casual homage knocked together with period-looking paint and a donor engine from a CB350. Beale’s reputation was built on doing things properly, and this is the third of just ten RC174 replicas he produced in cooperation with Honda, using original factory drawings, measurements and reference parts.

The original RC174 was peak Honda excess: a 297cc, air-cooled, inline six with 24 valves, six carburettors and a 7-speed gearbox. In a time when power mostly came from high revs and hope, the RC174 is designed to spin to a barely believable 18,000rpm. Beale faithfully recreated that madness, right down to the 6-into-6 exhaust system that defines the bike’s silhouette and soundtrack. No corners were cut, no modern reinterpretation, just a straight-faced attempt to recreate one of the most technically outrageous GP bikes of the 1960s.

But as with any replica of this level, the devil is in the details. The alloy fuel tank, fibreglass fairing, leading-shoe drum brakes and spoked wheels all mirror the 1967 factory machine. The red, yellow and blue Honda works livery is spot on, as is the overall stance – low, long and purposeful in that way only proper old race bikes manage.

This was an era when manufacturers raced to prove engineering dominance, not marketing slogans. Honda’s six-cylinder GP programme was never about efficiency or cost; it was about winning by being cleverer, braver and more obsessive than everyone else. The RC174 was the result, and Hailwood made it legendary.

With just ten Beale-built replicas ever made, and this example being a single-owner machine with matching frame and engine numbers, it sits in a very specific niche. It’s not a museum original, but it’s also not a tribute bike pretending to be something it isn’t.