Honda Aims at Royal Enfield With New Motorcycle Patents
Judging by new patents, Honda may introduce a new range of bikes based on a new platform, including a scrambler and an adventurer
A new Honda platform could be on the way, entering the middleweight segments in adventure and scrambler categories.
The platform appears to push in the neo-retro direction with both the scrambler and adventure variants.
Revealed in patent drawings published by Motorrad, the new platform will make use of the 348cc single-cylinder engine we can find in bikes such as the Honda H’ness CB350 DLX and Honda CB350RS, which are models marketed exclusively in Asia. The engine makes just under 21bhp in its CB350RS spec.
That means the adventurer of the platform would enter the realm of the previous generation Himalayan, where there’s now something of a gap in the market owing to the newer Royal Enfield Himalayan 450 becoming more sophisticated and more expensive. The old Himalayan produced 24bhp from its 410cc engine, and from that base platform was spun the Royal Enfield Scram 411 - a bike that would be competition for the newly-proposed Honda scrambler.
The Honda adventurer shown in the drawing bears some visual resemblance to the Himalayan, too, as noted by Motorrad, with its front screen shape and angle, single headlamp, and the shape of the rear of the bike.
One of the major gripes about the previous generation Himalayan was that 410cc engine, because - at least in Europe - 24bhp sort of isn’t cutting it. The new 452cc Sherpa motor found in the new generation Himalayan has been a step up in that regard, with its 45bhp being an almost 100 per cent increase in raw power, and making the new Himalayan a more appealing offering in Western markets.
As such, it might be reasonable to expect the 348cc models Honda appears to be plotting to be only marketed in Asia, or, at least, not in Europe.
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