How The Honda CX500T Pioneered The Turbocharged Motorcycle Revolution
- Honda’s CX500 Turbo was the world’s first production turbocharged motorcycle, showcasing Honda’s engineering capabilities.
- The CX500 Turbo featured innovative technology like liquid cooling, fuel injection, and a unique shaft final drive system.
- Despite its complexity, the CX500 Turbo was surprisingly normal to ride and maintain, showcasing Honda’s reliability and engineering prowess.
Honda is the world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer, and it does the sales figures it does largely on the back of small capacity, reliable runabouts in third-world countries. However, at the other end of the spectrum, it is also one of the most successful brands in motorcycle racing. Its engineering is so capable that it can make a motorcycle of whatever type it wants to, without worrying about the product’s financial return. The company has repeatedly tried to prove the latter, and one of the boldest proofs is the CX series: the CX500 Turbo. Or commonly known as the world’s first production turbocharged motorcycle.
But that’s not the only way you can define this beast. It featured an engine that Honda put on sale for a mere five years, but the lessons learned from it are being used by Honda (and everyone else) to this day. So let’s take a closer look at the CX500 Turbo, and why it was important not just for turbocharged motorcycles, but also for the world of two-wheelers.
To ensure accuracy, the information compiled in this article was sourced from the manufacturer, as well as other authoritative sources such as Cycleworld.com, Motorcycle.com, Motorcyclenews.com, and Visordown.com.
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The Background
The Reason Behind The Turbos
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The 1980s saw Japanese manufacturers blossom and their reliable, sweet-handling motorcycles took precedence over good ol’ torquey American Iron. The US government under Reagan then imposed a crippling import tariff on essentially Japanese imports above 700 cc to protect American motorcycle makers from having to shut shop because of their lack of competitiveness. This made the Japanese innovate and try to offer equivalent performance to American manufacturers (namely Harley-Davidson) and their large displacement engines by other means. This ‘other means’ was forced induction for middleweight motorcycles, and all four Japanese manufacturers got in on the idea.
In a few years, the tariff was lifted and there was no need for the special Japanese turbocharged motorcycle to exist anymore. However, there was a race among the Japanese manufacturers to be the first one to respond to the American tariffs, not to mention to be the first production turbocharged motorcycle in history. Honda won that race with the CX500 Turbo, beating Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha.
The Firsts
A Lot Of Game-Changing Tidbits
A little bit of context is needed here. When the CX series was launched at the end of the 70s, we were only a few years removed from the Vietnam War. Heck, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was lording it over his peers at the time. Tube amps provided amplification for everyone because transistors hadn’t quite taken over yet. With this backdrop in mind, let’s take a look at the CX series’ features, and then the Turbo in particular.
This wasn’t the first water-cooled production engine Honda had made, but it was close, only beaten by the Gold Wing launched in 1974. This makes the CX series one of the first ones to have liquid cooling—a game-changing technology that changed motorcycling forever. Moving on, it was definitely the first V-twin that Honda had made, armed with pushrods—a necessary inclusion because of other decisions Honda made.
Honda chose an 80-degree transverse v-twin, keeping the engine layout longitudinal like the Gold Wing, and gave it a shaft final drive to make it a good tourer. Shafts require no maintenance other than a regular oil change, unlike a chain that needs to be cleaned, lubricated, and adjusted every so often. It also picked up the contra-rotating gearbox tech from the luxury tourer. This allowed the motorcycle to resist the side-to-side rocking that we get from motorcycles with longitudinal engines when the throttle is opened and closed.
To keep the downpipes from fouling with the rider’s legs and to keep heat away from them, Honda chose to rotate them by 22 degrees. This made it impossible to use the usual cam chain and overhead camshaft, so a single camshaft sat at the base of the engine’s V and operated pushrods. The naturally aspirated CX500 had carburetors, but the CX500TC Turbo had fuel injection, which became a first for Honda (and just two years after the first fuel injection system on a production motorcycle). With the inclusion of the turbo, you had 64 percent more power than the normal CX500.
The chassis side of things wasn’t far behind the engine’s; the engine was a stressed member of the frame and hung from it like a modern sports bike. The CX500’s modular wheels were unique for the time, and they allowed the motorcycle to be fitted with tubeless tires – another uncommon feature of that era. The suspension, meanwhile, was space-age for the time; the front forks ran with compressed air, and the brake calipers, when they gripped the disc, actuated an anti-dive system.
At the rear, the now-famous Pro-Link rear suspension made its debut on a production Honda bike. In a move that would be unheard of today, the CX500 TC Turbo also had an instrument cluster that was completely different from the standard CX500. It had digital components that gave the rider warnings when something went wrong with either the turbocharging or injection system.
The Result
Surprisingly Normal
Despite all the complexity and the many firsts, especially with the turbocharging, the Honda CX500 Turbo was as normal as any other motorcycle for the time to ride and maintain, with the exception of the turbo lag. It was reliable, smooth, and truly remarkable. The latter is a big deal because even today, when someone launches brand new tech, especially when it is as complex as fuel injection and turbocharging, there are always some hiccups before it runs smoothly. For Honda to launch something this complex and have it run so well is worth every last bit of praise it can get. Today. there are owner clubs of the CX series not limited to the Turbos, but the blown ones deservedly get the respect and appreciation due to them.
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The Bigger Brother
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It would be remiss of us to not mention the CX650 Turbo, the successor to the CX500 Turbo. As the name suggests, it had a larger displacement engine and a higher compression ratio to make performance a little better off boost. To keep things in check, it also got a smaller turbocharger compared to the CX650, which makes the transition from off boost to on boost smoother.
The CX650 might have been a midsize displacement for the time, but no motorcycle could match it for torque and in-gear acceleration once that turbocharger was on boost. Just like the CX500, the CX650 Turbo was yanked from showroom floors after just a year of being on sale. We wouldn’t see forced induction on any production machine after this era until the Kawasaki Ninja H2 debuted three decades later. Even that doesn’t get a turbo, though.