DownsideUpDesign

I’ll be up front with you: I’m not a massive bike person (motor or pedal). Although I grew up riding around the bush back home on a Honda XR80 (which taught me how much Hondas like to rev…) and briefly owned a South African-built Honda CD125 Benly (Which taught me that even Japanese designed products can be horrifically unreliable), a throbbing passion for two wheeled objects has evaded me thus far.

This thing below could be the start of something, however:

This is the 2009 Honda Fury which isn’t being revealed (officially) until Friday but, as is often the case with these things, the first image has leaked onto the web.

Now the biking purists out there will probably scream at me because it seems that this bike is pretty impure as choppers go. It looks hardtail but has a secret shock absorber, it should be belt driven but uses shaft drive and  if you thought it was properly air cooled, you’d be wrong on that count too (the radiator is hidden somewhere in the chassis rails). Basically it’s designed for old, rich blokes who want to look hard but whose bad backs rule out going the whole Hog. But all that aside…it looks supremely cool!

The last time I remember Honda producing something so un-Japanese was the completely unhinged (and pretty vulgar) Rune. This is on a different plane with it’s satin grey paint job, an engine that looks like a jewel and a superb  front wheel with the orange pin-stripe. Only the seriously cheap side repeater on the rear guard detracts from what is a very pure, graphical design.

I’m looking forward to seeing more images after the official launch on Friday.

(Sources: Hell For Leather )