Honda Teases Another Neo Sports Cafe
Honda has teased another Neo Sports Café motorcycle on its social media channels, with many speculating it will be a new CB650R model featuring the company’s current retro-modern styling for naked bikes.
The teaser image shows just a part of the clutch cover and part of the frame, revealing a small “Neo Sports Café” logo, but one only needs to look at Honda’s existing naked bikes to see where the new model might fit in.
Honda currently offers a CB1000R, CB300R and, outside North America, a CB125R with the Neo Sports Café styling. That leaves a large gap between the 1000cc and 286cc models. At the moment, Honda offered two naked middleweight standards, the CB500F and the CB650F which was only just introduced to the U.S. market in 2018. Both of those bikes shared Honda’s previous aesthetics for naked motorcycles instead of the retro-influenced styling, making them ripe for the Neo Sports Café treatment.
Of the two middleweights, the 650 looks more likely to get a update, given Honda’s recent history of concept bikes. Last year, at EICMA, Honda introduced the CB4 Interceptor concept that was based on the CB650F. A new CB650R might draw some inspiration from the Interceptor, and may be the first of the Neo Sports Café models with a bullet-style fairing.
The Interceptor was preceded by another CB650F-based concept in 2015, simply called the CB4. This earlier concept actually predates Honda’s Neo Sports Café movement, but you can see how it influenced Honda’s current designs, especially around the headlight and the scoops above the radiator.
A new CB500R remains a possibility, but the buzz around the concepts make a CB650R a more likely candidate for a new model.
What remains to be seen is whether the new bike will be a production model or yet another concept. The Neo Sports Café badge and the yellow trim on the clutch cover would suggest a concept, but we only have to look at the CB1000R last year for an example of Honda showing a concept and following it up a few weeks later with a full production model. If Honda follows the same pattern, then we might see a concept next week at Intermot followed by a production model at EICMA in November.
Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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If Honda follows the same pattern, then we might see a concept next week at Intermot followed by a production model at EICMA in November.
And, if Honda continues to follow that pattern, we'll see the production model in Long Beach, too!
ugh, they should do the 500. the 650 was already overpriced, and underwhelming. I'd buy a 500 neo sports without a hint of regret.