Manufacturer Honda Production 1961–1968 Class Standard, sport bike | Also called Super Hawk, Honda 305 Successor CB350 | |
 | ||
Engine 305 cc (18.6 cu in) OHC straight-twin, 2 × 26 mm Keihin carburetors
kick and electric start | ||
The Honda CB77, or Super Hawk, was a 305 cc (18.6 cu in) straight-twin motorcycle produced from 1961 until 1967. It is remembered today as Honda's first sport bike. It is a landmark model in Honda's advances in Western motorcycle markets of the 1960s, noted for its speed and power as well as its reliability, and is regarded as one of the bikes that set the standard for modern motorcycles.
Contents
Characteristics
The CB77 had, at only 305cc, a relatively big engine in comparison to most other Japanese bikes of the period, although it had performance to rival much larger motorcycles from other countries. It quickly built a reputation for reliability, and was equipped with luxuries such as an electric starter.
The CB77 was built on the experience Honda had gained in Grand Prix racing, and differed greatly from previous models. It had a steel-tube frame instead of the pressed frames of earlier Hondas, and a telescopic front fork. The parallel twin engine, the biggest then available in a Honda, was an integral element of the bike's structure, providing stiffness in a frame that had no downtube, and was capable of 9,000 rpm. It could propel the bike at over 100 mph; as fast as British parallel twins with higher displacements, and with great reliability. Cycle World tested its average two-way top speed at 168.3 km/h (104.6 mph), and its 1⁄4 mi (0.40 km) time at 16.8 seconds reaching 83 mph (134 km/h).
Author Aaron Frank called it, "the first modern Japanese motorcycle... that established the motorcycle that we still operate under now, more than forty years later."
Related bikes
Honda also produced a lower-powered 247 cc (15.1 cu in) version called the CB72 Hawk, which otherwise had the same specifications. In 1962, Honda introduced an off-road bike, the CL72 250 Scrambler, with the same engine as the Hawk but with a different, full-cradle frame with a skid plate and other adjustments for off-road use. In 1965, the CL77 305 Scrambler appeared, with the bigger engine of the Super Hawk but otherwise similar to the CL72. Elvis rode a CB77 in the 1964 movie Roustabout.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig rode a CB77 Super Hawk on the trip he made with his son and their friends in 1968 on a two-month round trip from their home in St. Paul, Minnesota to Petaluma, California, which became the basis for the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. The novel never mentions the make or model of Pirsig's motorcycle, but does discuss their companions, John and Sylvia Sutherland's, new BMW, an R60/2. The R60/2, prized for its place in motorcycle literature, has changed hands and is still regularly ridden, while Pirsig was, as of 2007, still the owner of his CB77 Super Hawk.