Honda, these days, is a pretty conservative company. At least their North American motorcycle executives are cautious—even their innovations, like the auto-shifting DCT, seem to be somehow safe, unexciting, and aimed at taking the edge off riding.

But that wasn’t always the case, as this machine for sale at an upcoming Mecum auction proves! This 1973 Honda CB350 with “Flying Dragon” bodywork looks like some sort of modern creation fromDeus Ex Machina, but in fact this is a factory option from a time when the Japanese OEMs, particularly Honda, were willing to try anything to sell more bikes, especially in the US market.

The Girl Next Door bike

Interestingly, these groovy tins were not made for Honda’s top-tier four-cylinders of 1973, the CB500 or CB750. Instead, Honda sold them for its mid-range CL or CB models. Today, those bikes aren’t really viewed with a lot of excitement, but in the ’70s, you could say the CB350 was the Girl Next Door bike. Maybe it wasn’t exotic or exciting, but you still had good looks and fun times. It wouldjust aboutDo The Ton, and generally had a reputation for being more reliable and less oil-leaky than a Brit bike. Oh yes, and they were affordable, compared to bigger machines from America or Europe.

为all these reasons, this was one of Honda’s best-selling bikes through the late ’60s and early ’70s, with alleged sales of 250,000 machines from 1968 through 1973. A lot of people had these bikes; on the roads of that time period, the air-cooled twin-cylinder’s 35 horsepower was more than enough. The front and rear drum brakes were sufficient to slow down the 375-pound machine (wet weight). It was an easy-to-live with motorcycle.

Because so many were sold, many CB350s were modified. Look into vintage chopper mags, and you’ll find the occasional raked-out, king-and-queen-seated CB350. Others became racers. They weren’t so popular in that time as contemporary racebikes, but they were indeed flogged at the track. Decades later, many guys enjoyed vintage racing them because they were so cheap and plentiful.

And, Honda itself saw the potential with the platform, adapting it to the CL350 scrambler model… and also releasing the psychedelic Flying Dragon paint scheme as an option, as seen in these photos!

The first Japanese factory custom?

Although Kawasaki’s low-rider KZ models are often seen as the first factory custom bike from Japan, I wonder if this groovy bodywork might qualify. As far as I can tell, Honda didn’t ever include these on the showroom floor; they were an accessory-type option that riders paid extra for. You could argue about the finer details, but it certainly is an example of forward thinking from Honda at the time, although it doesn’t seem to have been a very successful program.

Honda apparently thought American riders would love a far-out paint job just as much as they loved tie-dyed shirts and made these tank-and-sidecovers sets in Japan, offering them to American customers. So says Margie Siegal in this write-uphere, anyway; but that article says the tins were only offered for the CL350 and CL450 models. As you can quite obviously see above, some riders were installing them on the CB350, so who knows? I do know that I’ve also seen them installed on CL models; Mecum sold such a machine back in 2018.

Either way, they are a cool part of Honda history, and an interesting, early attempt to attract dollars specifically from the American market. Over the next 30 years, we were to see first the crop of the ’70s low riders built on inline fours. The ’80s gave us Japanese muscle cruisers like the V-Max, along with much closer copies of the American V-twin formula. The ’90s and ’00s saw Japan go so far as to make reasonable facsimiles of the potato-potato sound and the pre-war skirted fenders that were traditional Indian Motorcycle aesthetic. This, of course, is not counting all the other high-power sport, touring and adventure bikes that saw huge sales in the US until the industry was knocked on its butt in 2008.

So. View these as a memento of better times, when the American motorcycle market was just starting its great, decades-long boom…

即将到来的销售

If you’re interested, the bike is for sale at Mecum’s Monterey auction, August 17-19, with up-to-date paperwork and 8,800 miles on the clocks. Mecum’s website says:

• Highly original unrestored condition
• Last inspected, serviced, and ridden at Iconic Motorbikes in Los Angeles in June 2023
• The 2-year only Flying Dragon sets are purported to be the only standalone factory custom motorcycle paint sets produced by Honda
• Honda Yellow Flying Dragon factory custom paint set

See the listinghere.