Honda has announced that it will debut a new concept machine – dubbed CB Concept Type II – at the Osaka Motorcycle Show on Saturday (19 March).
While many concept bikes are merely speculative flights of fancy, opportunities for designers to let out their wildest ideas, the new CB Concept Type II is set to preview the next generation of Honda’s unique air-cooled four-cylinder machine.
It’s significant, since it proves beyond doubt that Honda intends to revise the CB1100 range and to go ahead with its plans to conform to Euro4 emissions rules. Bear in mind that since the introduction of Euro3 limits, the CB has been the only four-cylinder, air-cooled motorcycle on the market.
The difficulties of getting air-cooled engines to pass ever-tighter emissions laws are further demonstrated by the adoption of water-cooled or partially water-cooled engines elsewhere. BMW’s latest R1200 boxer engines use water cooling and Harley-Davidson is adopting water-cooled cylinder heads on some of its traditional cruisers. Triumph’s new Bonneville also introduces water cooling to help combat emissions limits. Air cooled engines tend to need wider tolerances to cope with the greater variations of temperatures. These tolerances along with the difficulty in closely controlling temperatures in the cylinder heads and combustion chambers of air-cooled engines mean their emissions tend to be worse than their water-cooled counterparts.
The CB1100, however, uses complex castings that allow air to travel around and through the cylinder head, improving cooling and emissions.
Honda has already hinted at the next-generation CB1100 with the Concept CB shown in Tokyo last year (pictured above). Sharing the existing CB1100’s engine, it gained subtle styling updates for an even more convincing retro appearance.
The new Type II version of the CB Concept is expected to be sportier, possibly adopting a fairing like that of the 2007 CB1100R concept bike. Both CB Concepts are set to be transformed into production models over the next year or so.
