#Rc45

My greatest fear was of not taking the chance, of wimping out, of being that half-drunk guy at the bar, many years in the future, mumbling about the special whine of straight-cut gear-driven overhead cams, or staring at the floor in embarrassment, unable to pronounce “homologation” on the third try. Everyone who’s ever had a dream bike can tell you a story about it; most of them end with the words, “I wish I had it back.”

Well, this is not The Honda Museum, which I suppose is in Japan somewhere. This one’s in Torrance, California, a short drive from American Honda’s sprawling U.S. corporate HQ in a discreet location. Unfortunately, this museum isn’t open to the public, but Honda does let people in for various corporate events, or if they’re important bigwigs. How I got in I’ll never know, but major thanks to Honda’s PR guy Tony De Franze for making it happen. It all started when he and Mike Snyder mentioned they’d found three RC45s still in their crates a couple months ago in back of a warehouse…