New Honda Hornet revealed

[Ecosseven]

Honda have announced their new Hornet. Looks pretty good in my opinion although I’m not sure about the red anodised forks! Some links below.

The new Hornet has a slipper clutch, 4 pot radial mounted brakes, traction control and wheelie control that can be switched off. Seat height is 795mm and wet weight is 190kg.

The biggest surprise for me is the price. For a brand new bike with a new 755cc parallel twin engine putting out 90bhp and 55lb.ft of torque I was expecting it to be priced around £8,000 - £8500. It’s 7 grand. This is less than all its rivals and the same price as the SV650 which is a great bike but very dated now. A Z650 with 67bhp is £7,500 and Honda’s own CB650R is around £7,700.

I’m genuinely amazed at the price.

Apologies, edited to add the links.

https://www.visordown.com/news/new-bikes/latest-ge...

https://www.honda.co.uk/motorcycles.html

Edited by Ecosseven on Tuesday 4th October 14:54

[FNG]

You didn't include the links...

I like it in red with red forks, surprising myself slightly.

Does look very decent for 7k compared to its competition.

[sixor8]

I have a CB650F which inherited the Hornet (sort of) as a middleweight 4 cylinder, but it was down on power on the Hornet.

By the time it was revised in 2017 however, it had 90 bhp but all middleweights now seem to be twin cylinder. It's quite a bit lighter at 190kg though to its credit.

https://www.honda.co.uk/motorcycles/range/street/h...

ETA: What, back tyre only a 160! I have a 180 on the CB650.

Edited by sixor8 on Tuesday 4th October 14:41

[Krikkit]

Looks rather spiffing in yellow too, seems very well specced and cheap. Even getting excited with factory fitted guff it's only just over £8k.

[Slowboathome]

Blimey. It's £200 less than an MT07 and it's more powerful & better equipped.

[Biker9090]

It sounds reasonably promising - and exceptionally well priced. Pisses me off they put all those rather useless electronic gimicks on a 90hp bike and completely ignore something useful like lean sensitive ABS! Shame it's gone the way of the other reincarnations and gone down on power compared with the old one as well.

[lukeyman]

Slowboathome said:

Blimey. It's £200 less than an MT07 and it's more powerful & better equipped.

You forgot better looking too!

[sixor8]

It may have something to do with emission regs and getting the brand average down? Apparently only 100 g/km of CO2........

[stang65]

Getting slated on the Hornet pages on Facebook, quite understandably IMO.

I think if you styled a 750 twin to look as close to a Chinese 125 as possible you'd get this. I don't know why Honda wanted that? That's not to put down Chinese 125s but they're not ground breaking generally. The styling is being compared to all sorts of mundane 2 cylinder bike (Z650?).

The Hornet name has been cynically given to it to try and spice up a bland product out of desperation. There's absolutely nothing "Hornet" about this...4 cylinders..nope, big back tyre for the class...nope, instantly recognisable styling...nope... Didn't the original '98 600 have 98hp so this is even down on power?

I have a Hornet (a 2003 900) and if an owner of one of these compares this to mine I hope they're not offended when I laugh.....

[ChocolateFrog]

stang65 said:

Getting slated on the Hornet pages on Facebook, quite understandably IMO.

I think if you styled a 750 twin to look as close to a Chinese 125 as possible you'd get this. I don't know why Honda wanted that? That's not to put down Chinese 125s but they're not ground breaking generally. The styling is being compared to all sorts of mundane 2 cylinder bike (Z650?).

The Hornet name has been cynically given to it to try and spice up a bland product out of desperation. There's absolutely nothing "Hornet" about this...4 cylinders..nope, big back tyre for the class...nope, instantly recognisable styling...nope... Didn't the original '98 600 have 98hp so this is even down on power?

I have a Hornet (a 2003 900) and if an owner of one of these compares this to mine I hope they're not offended when I laugh.....

It does seem a bit cynical.

I remember (possibly incorrectly) that the Hornet was priced a bit above its rivals but it was generally regarded as being commensurately better.

This seems to be going for the budget end of the market.

Not necessarily a bad thing if Honda built quality is still there unlikely.

Without looking I guess it's not built in Japan.

[Jazoli]

Biker9090 said:

It sounds reasonably promising - and exceptionally well priced. Pisses me off they put all those rather useless electronic gimicks on a 90hp bike and completely ignore something useful like lean sensitive ABS! Shame it's gone the way of the other reincarnations and gone down on power compared with the old one as well.

It needs an IMU for that, which it doesn't have and would put the price up quite a bit.

[TheInternet]

Looks like a CB500F, but only £900 over one of those for the bigger engine, snazzier dash etc. seems good value.

[Ecosseven]

stang65 said:

Getting slated on the Hornet pages on Facebook, quite understandably IMO.

I think if you styled a 750 twin to look as close to a Chinese 125 as possible you'd get this. I don't know why Honda wanted that? That's not to put down Chinese 125s but they're not ground breaking generally. The styling is being compared to all sorts of mundane 2 cylinder bike (Z650?).

The Hornet name has been cynically given to it to try and spice up a bland product out of desperation. There's absolutely nothing "Hornet" about this...4 cylinders..nope, big back tyre for the class...nope, instantly recognisable styling...nope... Didn't the original '98 600 have 98hp so this is even down on power?

I have a Hornet (a 2003 900) and if an owner of one of these compares this to mine I hope they're not offended when I laugh.....

I bought an original Hornet 600 in 1999 and I agree that the new bike doesn't have the same visual appeal but I don't think it's that bad when compared with the MT-07 and the Z650 for example. Styling is very subjective.

However I think when looking at this bike objectively and looking at the price and the spec and comparing it with its competitors I can really see the appeal. If Honda hadn't used the Hornet name would you view the bike differently?

One thing I was surprised about was the 160 section rear tyre. For a 90bhp machine I assumed it would be a 180 section.

[Ecosseven]

TheInternet said:

Looks like a CB500F, but only £900 over one of those for the bigger engine, snazzier dash etc. seems good value.

Good point. You are getting an awful lot more for not a lot of money. This has almost twice the power!

[JJ55]

Really like that for the price & honda reliability. Not sure about the red forks, but they don’t look awful either. Would be yellow for me I think. The only thing that looks odd is the way the tft sits.

[LuS1fer]

I am a dinosaur, I confess but I really dislike modern, pointy bike styling. I clicked, hoping for something a bit retro.

I far prefer the retro Kwacker look.

[Fundoreen]

I was interested till I saw it. More of that ktm insect/japanese horrible manga drawings ste it seems.
Then again it does have a sort of ktm superduke 990 look which I did like.
This is a new engine size as far as I know so maybe they will use it in other classic style bikes.
But instead expect some sort of mini africa twin, probably with the usual 37 inch seat. Brought by the compact who will then claim its unwieldy and difficult to manage.

[Jazoli]

It's not a great looking thing to me, I also don't understand why folk are going on about the rear tyre size, a 160 section is about right and will make the bike handle and turn way much nicer than something with a 180 section rear.

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

Needs to use the 4 pot 650 engine off the cbr650r to be called a Hornet imo.

This is just a budget bike built to compete with the low power middle weights from kwak and yamaha. Rubbish.

[Max5476]

You can blame the eu for it being down on power. Because the A2 license class only allows derestriction from a maximum of 70kW down to 35, this then becomes the marketing target for these entry level new bikes. There’s a lot of bikes out there that would have been great bikes, but have been hampered by only achieving 70kW. This is also why most are designed as a parallel twin, as they comfortably make the power, achieve emissions and don’t weight to much, it’s just a shame they don’t have the character of old.