The curators of cool at Silodrome say one of the world’s most important press bikes — a 1969 Honda CB750 — is for sale.
You can read James McBride’s writeup on the bike at his site here, but here’s the skinny. This bike is the original press bike that Honda shipped over to the UK, which means some of the world’s most prominent moto-journos of that era would have had seat time on the then-revolutionary inline-four.
At the time, the CB750 was revolutionary, game-changing, and all those other hyperbolic words. Today, the bike is expected to haul in between £20,000 and £30,000 at its April 23 auction (at Bonhams).
It might make nice coffee table, but that’s about it.
There were a lot of niggling problems on the early ones that got solved on the K1s.
Overall gearing was too short, which allowed the chain to ‘positively ventilate’ the already porous sandcast crankcases.
The one-into-four throttle cable arrangement was changed to the link type which made synchronization a whole lot easier.
A friend-of-a-friend has one he’s restoring, and its turning into a P.I.T.A…..
The U.S. press bike sold a coupe of years ago for almost $150,000 U.S. Many one-off parts on these bikes, which were shipped before production for press tests and bike shows, and were not meant to be sold to the public. Today’s equivalent pre-production press bikes are sent to the crusher.