WE’VE seen the teaser images already, although, despite our best efforts with the editing software, they still weren’t very clear! Now though we can see the new Honda Hawk 1100 in ALL its café racer glory!
It seems as though the image has come from an official Honda motorcycle rental company based in Japan. They have the Hawk, and several other new models like the closely related NT1100, listed along with an expected date of arrival. Despite the teaser they have used featuring a watermarked stamp over the image, keen-eyed computer boffins have managed to unlock the bike behind, showing what is the clearest image yet of the new Hawk 1100.
From the image, we can see clearly the bike uses the same frame as the Africa Twin and NT1100, with even the subframe looking identical to the one found on the adventure touring machines. The forks are inverted items, and again, they look to be the same as the NT1100 and linked to identical Nissin calipers.
Powering the bike is the same parallel twin-cylinder engine as found in the Africa Twin, NT1100, and CMX1100. That should mean DCT is available, although the bike shown is the manual transmission model.
The biggest talking point of the bike though is with the sleek styling, that’s very in tune with some other café racer sports bikes on the market at the moment. Both the MV Agusta Superveloce and the new Triumph Speed Triple 1200 RR. Both have proven that there is a market for premium factory-built café racer-style machines, even if the Hawk is likely to lag behind them in terms of outright pace and performance.
We also now have a launch date for the new machine, with the covers getting pulled off the new in just a matter of days on March 19th. We’ll be scouring the social media channels for the moment it is unveiled and will bring you all the details as we have them.
