The Stylish Honda Motorcycle That Still Turns Heads Today

The Stylish Honda Motorcycle That Still Turns Heads Today
In the early 1980s, change was coming to the American Motorcycle Association’s Superbike Championship. The top dogs of the racing class were sporting 1,000 cubic-centimeter (1.0 liter) engines that could produce up to 150 horsepower, pushing the safe limits of the motorcycle frames, tires, and suspension that were tasked with harnessing that power. Subsequently, in 1983, the maximum engine displacement for the Superbike class was reduced to 750 cubic centimeters (cc).
Besides a smaller, less powerful engine, the Superbike racers also now had to share a frame and other components with production motorcycles that were available for the public to purchase. The process of selling a sufficient quantity of street-legal vehicles to qualify for a racing series is known as homologation and the bike that Honda had in mind to dominate the new 750 cc Superbike class was the freshly minted 1983 VF750F V45 Interceptor.
The VF750F Interceptor was massively different from the Honda racing bikes that preceded it. To start, it had a highly visible square-tube perimeter frame rather than conventional — and discreet — round tubing. But the most shocking change was its engine. Previously, Honda had been racing with air-cooled inline-four-cylinder powerplants. Not only was the VF750F water-cooled, but it also used a V-4 design that was derived from the brand’s Magna and Sabre cruising motorcycles. Victory in the Superbike Championship would evade Honda in 1983, but the brand would make up for that shortfall by winning five consecutive years in a row from 1984 to 1988 with its VF750F.
[Featured image by Daniel Hartwig via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.0]