Young Machine, that Japanese moto-mag with a mysterious inside track to the Japanese OEMs, is once again teasing the idea of a new scrambler in Honda’s 500 lineup.

Wait, what? Why would Honda consider building a retro machine around its 471 cc liquid-cooled parallel twin? Honda already has the CB500F, CBR500R and CB500X with this engine, isn’t that plenty of choice?

The simple answer is, we are living in the second era of the UJM, where those initials now stand for “Universal Japanese Motor.” Honda uses the same motor for everything these days; the 124 cc single from the Grom now powers about half a dozen machines. The 1100 liquid-cooled parallel twin is the heart of the Africa Twin, the Rebel 1100 and the NT1100 (and soon, the Hawk 11). The 286 cc single from the CRF300L also powers the CRF300 Rally and the CB300R neo-retro naked. Go through Honda’s website and you’ll see other examples; Honda is all about reusing and recycling technology to keep its costs down. Gone are the days of one-offs like the XR650L.

So, keeping all that in mind, realize that Honda is missing out on a huge portion of the retro market, and would no doubt like to capture some of those sales. The easiest way to do so is to simply build a scrambler around an existing engine, and we saw our first glimpses of such a bikeall the way back in 2019, withpatent drawings of a 500 retro appearing.

Since then, we’ve had the whole COVID-19 flap, which has set the industry on its ear and may have delayed the release of such a bike. Honda has also been busy developingthe H’Ness platform in India, with speculation that that’s the basis of a future scrambler.

Maybe, maybe not.Young Machine, which is usually fairly close to the truth, is suggesting Honda is planning to bring a 500-series scrambler to market soon, and has drawn up the mock-up above (based off Honda’s patents, obviously). Will the bike actually come to market? It seems likely Honda will build something along these lines, but with gasoline engines rapidly gaining the disfavor of governments, who knows for sure. It looks like a low-cost way for Honda to get into the game, though!