Honda Hornet Makes a Comeback!

Honda’s Hornet name has appeared on a vast array of bikes over the years—ranging from 250cc screamers to the Fireblade-derived Hornet 900—but the next-generation machine to carry the title looks ready to take it in a different direction altogether.

Honda showed off a sharply styled naked streetfighter concept at EICMA with a familiar name: Hornet.

Honda revealed 3D artwork representing the new Hornet at the EICMA show in Milan but continues to hold its cards close when it comes to revealing any definite details about either the bike’s technology or its production plans for the machine. That leaves us piecing together what’s shown in the concept art with rumors from Japan to work out where Honda is taking the project.

The wireframe, computer-generated artwork clearly shows that the traditional Hornet look—pretty much an evolution of the UJM with a large, circular headlight and backbone frame hidden under a saddle-style tank—is largely gone on the future model. That circular lamp is replaced with a steeply raked, integrated design, while the tank sides curl forward to align with the fork. At the back, the seat has Fireblade overtones, with distinct intakes either side of the rider’s section and a high, pointed tail.

Other than that, we can see a double-sided, conventional swingarm and perhaps the hint of a belly-mounted exhaust system to keep the overall look clean.

The engine, shown in profile, is clearly compact. Honda’s press information might be short of facts and figures but it highlights the “exhilarating engine performance” of the original Hornet models, while captions on a video released on YouTube call the bike “a middle-class naked of ultramodern design and high-revving engine character.”

Details are few, but it makes sense for Honda to use the same parallel-twin architecture found in the Africa Twin and upcoming NT1100, but with a lower displacement.Honda
That might hint at a four-cylinder, which was also a consistent factor on previous Hornets, regardless of their capacity, but information from Japan hints that the new Hornet could actually be a twin.

The engine seen in the”art” images is simply a side-on outline, giving little hint as to the cylinder count, but its overall silhouette is similar to the Africa Twin motor. The cylinder head appears to be fatter on its intake side, potentially hinting at the adoption of the Africa Twin’s Unicam arrangement, where one camshaft acts directly on the intake valves and operates the exhaust valves via rockers to make for a more compact overall design.

Japanese sources have referred to the new model as the CB750S, claiming it uses a 755cc parallel twin, and that would certainly appear to fit with the Honda renderings. Such an engine would give Honda the opportunity to work the same trick that it employed with the Africa Twin’s 1,084cc twin, using it in a growing range of seemingly disparate models, from the Rebel 1100 to the NT1100. According to the Japanese rumors, the same engine will be used in the much-anticipated Transalp, expected to debut in the not-too-distant future as a steppingstone below the full-sized Africa Twin and, according to the same Japanese sources, to be designated XL750L.

Both the Hornet and Transalp names have been the focus of a concerted campaign of trademark applications all over the world during 2021, with Honda establishing ownership rights on the titles in a host of countries. Notably, though, the Hornet title hasn’t been applied for in the USA yet—over here, previous models have been simply “CB” titled, so as and when the new Hornet reaches these shores it might well use the rumored CB750S branding rather than the Hornet nomenclature. Stay tuned for more from V1 MOTO.

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