In Which Your Author Loses An Afternoon Street Race To Another Honda

I'd been watching the bike from inside the restaurant, hoping I'd get out before the owner did so I could get a photo of it and put the appropriate crappy vintage filter on it. And just for once in my life, all my dreams came true. It was the cleanest and nicest V65 Sabre I'd seen in my adult life. For those of you who weren't paying attention to this stuff, the 1983 V65 Magna was the quickest production motorcycle in history on its debut, breaking into the tens with the infamous Jay Gleason on the throttle. The 1984 V65 Sabre that followed applied square-edged modern styling to the same template.

You've all heard of the 1985 Yamaha V-Max but the V65 Hondas were first to the table with 120-plus V-Four power. I'd honestly forgotten about them until automotive diarist Zach Bowman started writing last month about the experience of selling his father's V65s. Needless to say, I was excited to see a real live one in the middle of a sunny Friday afternoon.

As I was firing up my CB1100, the owner came out and got on his Sabre. I flagged him down. We chatted for a minute. He appeared to be a college heavyweight powerlifter of some type; massive shoulders, ripped arms, clipped demeanor. I'd thought he might have come into Sabre ownership by chance but a quick conversation showed that he knew exactly what he had. We parted ways and I headed back to work.

Five minutes later, I was leaning through a long sweeper on the way back downtown when I saw the Sabre in my rearview mirror. He pulled alongside my CB1100. We looked at each other, we dropped to second gear, and we cranked the throttles.

The V65's 1098cc V-Four was a masterpiece of liquid-cooled engineering that delivered 120 horses at the crank but can still put 108 to the wheel after 80,000 miles. The CB1100 is, strictly speaking, a CB1150, with 1149cc of air-cooled inline-four tuned more for fuel economy (I average 43.9mpg on a full-throttle commute) and vintage aesthetics than for raw power. Rare is the CB11100 that can crank the 85hp mark on a dyno.

Nevertheless, for the first fifty feet I jumped well ahead --- largely because of fuel injection vs. carbs, I suspect. For a moment, I was really disappointed. Would the mighty V65 fall to a retro-bike? But then the square light of the Sabre started to swell. I executed a no-lift clutchless shift to third, squeaking the rear tire with the violence of it, but before we hit the 100mph mark the Sabre was two bikes past me. I gave him the thumbs-up. He nodded slightly. He knew he was cool.

The Sabre, like the Yamaha Fazer, is a square-headlight relic of a period in motorcycle styling that seems to resonate with exactly nobody. When the CB1100 came out in 2013, the biggest criticism people had of was that Honda had dared to combine the square-tank 1985 look with 1970s detailing. A Japanese company called Samurider immediately debuted a $1500 replacement gas tank in the proper 1969 CB750 shape. They sell a ton of 'em. Nobody wants even a faint reminder of the Eighties. I wonder sometimes if that will ever change.

Good V65s are few and far between. I talked to Zach about his father's bikes when he was selling them but he assured me that I probably didn't the hassle. And really the CB1100 does the retro/cruiser thing for me very well. Still. There was a moment in history, my friend, where nothing on the street, on two wheels or four, could get in front of a V65 Sabre's license plate. Think about that.