Classically styled Honda CB350C Special Edition surfaces
Honda is offering a classic take on its popular CB350 platform in India. We want to see it come here.
Turns out it’s not just Royal Enfield who can nail the classic-cool look. This gorgeously styled take on Honda’s popular CB350 platform adds even more old-school to the bike’s old-school charm.
Known as the CB350C Special Edition, the bike started showing up in Indian dealerships this week. With a starting price of 201,900 rupees (about £1,700 at current exchange rates), the model is offered in two colour schemes: Red Metallic, and Mat Dune Brown.
Hitherto, the styling of the CB350 - known as the GB350S here in the UK - has leaned into the 1960s/1970s aesthetic, but the CB350C Special Edition takes things back a decade or two before that, creating a machine that serves as a very direct rival to the Royal Enfield Classic 350.
(It’s also a machine that proves BSA didn’t have to make its Bantam 350 look so modern if it didn’t want to)
Under the skin, of course, the bike is the same CB350/GB350S platform we know and love. With a cheerful 348cc single-cylinder engine pumping out 20bhp at 5,500rpm and 21lb ft of torque at 3,000rpm.
When editor-in-chief Toad Hancocks rode the GB350S early this year, he described it as “about the most honest modern classic bike you can go out and buy.”
Notably, the GB350S started life as the H’ness and was only available in India and a handful of other Asian countries. But when European bikers caught wind of the stylish and simple machine, they began pressuring Big Red to bring it west.
“Thankfully enough noise was made, and not even Honda could ignore the fact that people on this side of the planet wanted a taste of this handsome-looking and refreshingly simple little bike,” Toad observed.
That’s important information for anyone charmed by the CB350C Special Edition. At present, it is not being offered in the UK. But, as far as we can tell, there’s no reason it couldn’t be. After all, the essential aspects of the bike already exist in the UK market. So, getting the CB350C Special Edition over here is theoretically just a matter of convincing Honda that it’s financially in their interest to do so.
So, get busy pestering, fellow riders. We’d love to see this bike available for laid-back bimbles along the seaside and Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride events.
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Chris Cope is a fourth-generation journalist, originally from Texas. He has lived in the UK for roughly two decades and has been writing about motorcycles for most of that time. He has written for dozens of publications and websites in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
