Honda to produce road going RC213V for 2014

[Ray916MN]

MCN Posted the following earlier today and then pulled it down.



Honda insiders have revealed the firm will on Friday announce the plan to put a road-going version of the MotoGP V4 RC213V into production for 2014 as it tries to give a massive boost of excitement to the Honda brand.

Honda boss Takanobu Ito will make the announcement on Friday this week as part of a bigger speech outlining the future of the firm with the RC213V production bike being presented as a halo bike which will be hugely expensive and strictly limited in numbers.

This is definitely not a replacement for the CBR1000RR Fireblade and will be more akin to the £40,000 Ducati Desmosedici RR which sold out and was built in bigger numbers than first planned despite a massive price tag.

The rumours of a road-going Honda based on a MotoGP bike have been doing the rounds since the World Championship ditched 500cc two-strokes in favour of four-stroke 1000cc machines in 2003.

It's known Honda was very close to putting a 1000cc V5 into production in 2006 but this never happened for reasons known only to Honda.

It now appears Honda is ready to make the leap and in part this may be helped by the firm's decision to make a run of customer specification engines for the Claiming Rule Teams (CRT) in 2013 which will change the way the engines are made.

There are no official details at the moment and we will have to wait for the official speech to be given in Tokyo on Friday but it’s understood Ito will make reference to some of the greatest Hondas of the past such as the RC30 when he makes his address.

A Honda insider said: "This has been talked about for a while now within Honda but there is now the firm intention to put a bike derived from the MotoGP bike into production so we can show the kind of engineering, passion and excitement Honda has become known for.”

A full MCN investigation into this story will be in the September 26 issue on sale next week along with updates online as soon as there is official word from Honda.

[Jared]

Interesting to see a company like Honda enter this market, I wouldn't think this fits their regular business model.  If they price it in Desmosedici range I wonder if they will see the same kind of demand Ducati did?

[carlson_mn]

what style of engine does Honda use in MotoGP?  I had assumed an I4... but looks not?

[Chris]

Honda has a V4 just like Ducati Yamaha is the only one that uses a I4

[vince]

I would like to see them use the V5 motor.

[Hope2Ride]

A full MCN investigation into this story will be in the September 26 issue on sale next week along with updates online as soon as there is official word from Honda.

Anybody here read this article? I searched for it on MCN's website and couldn't find anything.