NGC-Honda GB 500 - any opinions?

[SIR REAL ED]

Only sold in the US in 1988-1989 IIRC.  Sold like lead balloons due to high price, low performance, and styling geared towards the old cheap geezers who love to talk about how they are dying to buy a modern classic but never open up their wallets!!!!

One report I saw stated about 2,000 were imported to the US, and when they did not sell, 1,000 of those were exported to other countries.

Any previous or currtent owners out there?

Thoughts on leg room, clip-on comfort, etc.

Thanks in advance.

[blackcat]

A good friend of mine owned one for awhile but sold it in a very short amount of time as he said it was a boring ride. He bought it used from a guy that parked it for many years ago so it was not a pristine example but I don't think a nicer version of the bike would have changed his mind. I never rode it but I trust his opinion.

[Huzo]

My buddy has one.

[mhershon]

I owned one, loved it. Set it up with a dual seat and passenger pegs. Worked out great while my wife and I lived in Tucson. We moved to Denver and it was not great on long mountain grades at altitude two-up, but perfectly adequate solo. Handled super, looked beautiful, narrow and agile and dependable, unlike the bikes it was modeled after. If you are concerned about legroom and sit-up comfort, you can find more appropriate bikes for far less money, is my feeling.

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

My friend Joe and Carol owned one each. I made luggage mounts for them to attach Harbor Freight Apache cases. That was so they could ride them to a FSSNOC event in Alabama!





Nice looking bikes except for the US market emissions wart on the side of the cylinder.

[mhershon]

This is me and my GB500 somewhere near Tucson in the early 2000s....

[john fish]

Ergos:

https://cycle-ergo.com/

I think they're pretty.  Never rode one.

[Michael_A]

They are really cool bikes. Very uncharacteristic for Honda to do a British retro style effort, but in typical Honda fashion it's bulletproof and a bit boring. Unique for what it is, not many around. I think what really killed it, aside from the price, was Triumph coming out with the Bonneville line. Had Triumph NOT done that, we may have likely seen a 750+cc version of it. But Honda couldn't play the heritage card once the Bonnie's were thrown down. I like the GB's, wish Honda developed them a bit farther. They seem to have developed a bit of a cult following, which is cool. I'd get one if one came up locally at the right price and was in nice shape. 

[SIR REAL ED]

My buddy has one.

Is your buddy as shy and unopinionated as you?

Could you get him to speak up?  Maybe if you bought him a few drinks?

[SIR REAL ED]

They are really cool bikes. Very uncharacteristic for Honda to do a British retro style effort, but in typical Honda fashion it's bulletproof and a bit boring. Unique for what it is, not many around. I think what really killed it, aside from the price, was Triumph coming out with the Bonneville line. Had Triumph NOT done that, we may have likely seen a 750+cc version of it. But Honda couldn't play the heritage card once the Bonnie's were thrown down. I like the GB's, wish Honda developed them a bit farther. They seem to have developed a bit of a cult following, which is cool. I'd get one if one came up locally at the right price and was in nice shape. 

That is an angle I did not consider, but which makes a lot of sense. 

The re-emergence of Triumph probably suppressed sales of the Kawasaki W650/W800 as well. 

The Japanese would have been nuts to try to recapture the "British bike" experience after Triumph rose from the ashes.

[SIR REAL ED]

I owned one, loved it. Set it up with a dual seat and passenger pegs. Worked out great while my wife and I lived in Tucson. We moved to Denver and it was not great on long mountain grades at altitude two-up, but perfectly adequate solo. Handled super, looked beautiful, narrow and agile and dependable, unlike the bikes it was modeled after. If you are concerned about legroom and sit-up comfort, you can find more appropriate bikes for far less money, is my feeling.

That makes sense.  I would assume less performance, versatility, and ergonomics compared to my DR650.

With those skinny tires, I would expect very light handling.

My thinking is the coolness factor might outweigh the negatives.  Although, my aging body does not value coolness as much as my feeble mind.

As always, the question remains:  "Can imagination and self-delusion, overpower reality and good sense?"

[PeteS]

I think part of the reason the Honda didn’t sell was bad timing. Many of the older riders it was aimed at likely still had their vintage bikes. In my case I was still riding my Norton fairly regularly. Younger riders could buy a CB600 for about the same price or less and get twice the horsepower and a more attractive machine. The Retro Triumphs didn’t come along until ten years later, long after Honda quit the GB.

Pete

[Huzo]

Is your buddy as shy and unopinionated as you?

Could you get him to speak up?  Maybe if you bought him a few drinks?

We’re both the same, he also carries himself with a quiet dignity…

[Stretch]

I owned one for 25 years. Mine was in really, really nice shape. I finally sold
it on BAT because I didn't ride it as much as other bikes, and it was getting to be a
hassle to keep it pristine and worry about dinging it in the garage.

Really nice bike! Superb fit and finish. Handled well, especially with BT-45s.
Brakes were quite good. Easy to work on, too. Like all Hondas, it liked to rev.
Nice spread of power, but not a ball of fire. The handling allowed one to keep corner
speed up and make decent time. '89 and '90 were the two model years in the USA.
Both years are identical.

I'm 6'3" tall, and leg room was cramped. 2 hours on it and I was ready to get off
for a good long while. Upper body, wrists, etc., were okay - but the lack of
leg room was a killer for me.

The plastic seat cowl was gorgeous, but not one of Honda's engineering triumphs.
The foam seat hump underneath flexed, and eventually the mounting holes on the
side would begin to crack. The solution was to take it off - the bike looked nearly as great
without it.

I left mine bone stock - but there were parts available to make it go A LOT quicker.
I'm told that an XR/XL600 jug and piston dropped right in, and cams for the XL600/XL650
would work.  SuperTrapp made a pipe for it. Cycle World hopped one up and it ran a
12.8 second quarter at 101MPH. http://www.champsclock.com/gb500hu.htm

If I remember right, it wasn't so great for racing because the weight distribution wasn't ideal.
The suspension was also too soft for really serious work, even on the street. Not bad, but
things moved around too much when pushed hard.

They didn't sell primarily because they were so expensive. MSRP was something like $4500,
which was A LOT of money for a 500 single at the time. (I bought mine used for half that - with
only 700 miles on the clock!  )  Kawasaki's EX500 of the time was a grand cheaper, almost a
second-and-a-half quicker in the quarter mile, and had a 20 MPH top speed advantage over the GB.
It was also no slouch in the handling department. To get to the level of the Kwacker's performance,
one would have had to drop another $1400 in parts, plus labor if you didn't do it all yourself. That brings
us to almost $6K - nearly double the price of the Kawasaki. British single nostalgia, apparently, wasn't
THAT big a seller back then!

I'm not sure I'd buy another one, but I really enjoyed the one I had.

                                                                    -Stretch

[Dr. Enzo Toma]

A few years ago I visited the North Texas Norton Owners Association club house in TX and spotted a GB500 Tourist Trophy as a Japanese stand-out in a collection of British and Italian motorcycles. I was told it was the factory cafe racer you could buy without needing to become a collector of obscure tools and serving trays (used to catch oil under parked bikes).

Honda currently have a GB350 in some markets and the Classic variant has gained a lot of attention as an economical retro bike.
https://www.honda.co.jp/GB350/

[faffi]

I had forgotten about the GB500, but perhaps it was the first modern retro? It came and went almost a decade before the Bonnie 800, which itself was an ugly duckling compared to the W650 that came out a couple of years before. Over the years, though, Triumph has got it right.

The GB500 is basically a styling version of the XBR500 that came out for 1986 and intended as a modern version of the FT500 which again was a modern attempt to go after the SR500, a bike that was popular in many parts of Europe to the part of being most sold bike in Germany 3 years in a row, a role now more or less held by the BMW  GS for a quarter century.

[Muzz]

I had the GB400.

The story here in New Zealand that a rep from Blue wing Honda, the NZ agent, was over in England and saw one on the street. He follow up and ultimately Blue Wing Honda imported one shipment and one shipment only. They were quite reasonably priced. We had two dealerships here in Christchurch and my favourite one let me take one for a squirt around the hills. I was hooked, but by the time I sold my 250RS that agency had sold all their quota and I had to get it from the other one. I wanted the 400 as, down here at least, some of the 500's were having some oil starvation problems in the head. I got the one with the dual seat.

Thge tires on it, Dunlop K591's, were absolute crap. The back one was crap in the dry and suicidal in the wet. The back wore out in 6000kms, the front in 8000. The bike shop where I got the replacement tires from suggested K491's, they LOOKED exactly the same. They weren't exactly the same. Brilliant in the dry and the same in the wet. They were still on it when I sold it at 26,000 kms. The bike handled like it was on rails and went around corners like they weren't there. I just loved the bike; unfortunately my shoulders started to lock up from the riding position.

Rejetting the carb made a huge difference, two sizes bigger on the pilot jet. It came with a faulty carb as well. After giving their mechanic three goes at it while under warranty I waited until it was out of warranty and fixed it myself. The slide had not been machined flat where the needle was located. Lathed that flat and then raised the needle by inserting washers under it. Transformed the way it went.

[SIR REAL ED]

I owned one for 25 years. Mine was in really, really nice shape. I finally sold
it on BAT because I didn't ride it as much as other bikes, and it was getting to be a
hassle to keep it pristine and worry about dinging it in the garage.

Really nice bike! Superb fit and finish. Handled well, especially with BT-45s.
Brakes were quite good. Easy to work on, too. Like all Hondas, it liked to rev.
Nice spread of power, but not a ball of fire. The handling allowed one to keep corner
speed up and make decent time. '89 and '90 were the two model years in the USA.
Both years are identical.

I'm 6'3" tall, and leg room was cramped. 2 hours on it and I was ready to get off
for a good long while. Upper body, wrists, etc., were okay - but the lack of
leg room was a killer for me.

The plastic seat cowl was gorgeous, but not one of Honda's engineering triumphs.
The foam seat hump underneath flexed, and eventually the mounting holes on the
side would begin to crack. The solution was to take it off - the bike looked nearly as great
without it.

I left mine bone stock - but there were parts available to make it go A LOT quicker.
I'm told that an XR/XL600 jug and piston dropped right in, and cams for the XL600/XL650
would work.  SuperTrapp made a pipe for it. Cycle World hopped one up and it ran a
12.8 second quarter at 101MPH. http://www.champsclock.com/gb500hu.htm

If I remember right, it wasn't so great for racing because the weight distribution wasn't ideal.
The suspension was also too soft for really serious work, even on the street. Not bad, but
things moved around too much when pushed hard.

They didn't sell primarily because they were so expensive. MSRP was something like $4500,
which was A LOT of money for a 500 single at the time. (I bought mine used for half that - with
only 700 miles on the clock!  )  Kawasaki's EX500 of the time was a grand cheaper, almost a
second-and-a-half quicker in the quarter mile, and had a 20 MPH top speed advantage over the GB.
It was also no slouch in the handling department. To get to the level of the Kwacker's performance,
one would have had to drop another $1400 in parts, plus labor if you didn't do it all yourself. That brings
us to almost $6K - nearly double the price of the Kawasaki. British single nostalgia, apparently, wasn't
THAT big a seller back then!

I'm not sure I'd buy another one, but I really enjoyed the one I had.

                                                                    -Stretch

I remember reading that hop-up article from Cycle World back in the day. 
But like every other American rider under the age of 50 at the time, I had no desire for a slow, expensive bike. 
I had a Suzuki GS1000G at the time.
The GB500 I am looking at has the XR600 top end installed, Supertrapp exhaust, and after market carb.

You are right about the Kawasaki Ninja 500. 
Cycle magazine absolutely raved about the "1/2 of a Ninja 1000" when it was released in 1987 (IIRC). 
About 1996, my wife and I were riding on the Blue Ridge Parkway and at a rest stop, we met a guy on a Ninja 500. 
After shooting the bull for 15 minutes, he said "Take it for a spin."  A couple miles later I was hooked and bought one a few months later.

Ironically, I also recently spotted a pristine Ninja 500.  I have not asked the owner if he wants to sell. 

I suspect if I ride the GB500 and the Ninja 500 back to back, I will quickly lose interest in the GB500.  Plus the Ninja (after 1992) has 17" tubeless wheels.

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

But like every other American rider under the age of 50 at the time, I had no desire for a slow, expensive bike. 

Nice generalization... I was only 27 in '90 and already had a taste for "slow, expensive" bikes.  Some of us could see beyond the 1/4 mile times and top speeds.