IT’S been no secret that Honda has been wanting to use the parallel-twin from the Africa Twin in a wider range of bikes. And at the end of last year, they did just that, as the CMX 1100 Rebel was born.
And it looks like a great bike, and one that Visordown is itching to swing a leg over once restrictions allow. But the thing is, it doesn’t have high volume written all over it. Indeed, in the UK at least, it might not be the biggest model we have in our near future.
New 2021 Honda CMX1100 Rebel Revealed
For that, Honda is digging deep into its back catalogue, and it’s picking out a model that is very well known, and that has shifted big units in years gone by. It is of course the NT range or touring motorcycles, and Honda has just registered the name NT1100 for an incoming bike.
The NT name was a staple in the Honda range for 15 years and first appeared in 1998 in NT650V form. The recipe was simple and fairly bland. Take a solid, dependable, and unstressed engine, bolt it to an equally solid, dependable, and benign chassis, wrap it in all-encompassing jelly-mould bodywork, and then bless it with womb-like levels of rider and passenger comfort.
The original Nt650V Deauville
It wasn’t designed to set the world on fire, which is good, because it didn't. But when it came down to covering big miles, few bikes could hold a candle to it, and that really help it to sell well. The full name of the bike was the NT650V Deauville, a name borrowed from a pretty French Rivera town. All too soon though the name had been tweaked and the bike forever became known as the Dullville!
This new bike should be a more exciting proposition thanks to the torquey, powerful yet infinitely useable engine at its heart. The CRF1100L’s unit is all things to all riders and is only really a minor update away from any application in a range of different bikes – as we have seen in the CMX 1100. It’s also got a long life=span already engineered into its bores, provides good economy, and makes packaging a motorcycle easy thanks to its compact proportions.
How will the new Honda NT1100 look?
Well, we’ve actually already seen it, in patent form anyway. These patent images were being touted at the time as being for a naked sibling to the Africa Twin, in truth they could easily be a sport touring motorcycle, just sans its fairing.
The images show a hybrid frame featuring a cast backbone and tubular top frame, with a box section clamping the front of the engine and using it as a stressed member.
With Honda still going all-in with its DCT gearbox, the latest NT1100 will obviously arrive in DCT form, as well as a manual model.
