This Futuristic Honda Motorcycle Concept Blended Timeless Design And New Technology

This Futuristic Honda Motorcycle Concept Blended Timeless Design And New Technology
As the assembled masses walked by Honda’s booth at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show, they were treated to a concept motorcycle that would have a direct impact on bikes Honda had yet to make. The Zodia is the natural ancestral parent to both the mythical Valkyrie Rune and the entire series of VTX bikes (via Honda).
The Zodia was a Honda, but it was very much a departure from a typical “Honda.” This cruiser was designed to look like a classic hot rod that had been blended with some space-age vehicle. While the lower half of the bike — the V-twin engine, exhaust pipes, and wheels — all scream muscle car, the top resembles something from an ethereal future.
We don’t know if anyone on Honda’s design team was a fan of H.R. Giger, but the bulbous yet oddly sleek curves of the fenders and gas tank, combined with the graceful arching fork and an integrated headlight that slopes back to (what looks like) a sculpted one-piece handlebar sure points to that. Giger was the Swiss artist famous for his distinct “biomechanical” airbrush style and whose 1976 painting “Necronom IV” was the inspiration for the xenomorph we see in the seminal ’79 movie “Alien” by Ridley Scott (via Artnet).
But this concept bike’s beauty wasn’t just skin deep; it housed some genuinely remarkable features beneath its “senuous [sic] body lines” (as Honda put it). A V-twin 1500cc “maintenance-free overhead camshaft” spun the back wheel via an ingenious hydro-mechanical automatic transmission (aka Human Fitting Transmission). Basically, it’s a continuously variable transmission (CVT) Honda would later use on its DN-01 cruiser in 2008 (via Motofomo).