WHATS THIS ?

[Nurse Julie]

Can anyone tell me what this is please?

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[Davelu88]

Hi Julie , I think it's a Honda Dream from 1955 .

[SumpMagnet]

Pretty sure Dave is right. Looks nicer in Black though in my view...

[Nurse Julie]

Thanks chaps. I have now found info on Intertwerp.
Someone posted the photo on FB. It was at a bike meet on the Gold Coast in Australia.

For the first time ever, that I can recall, I saw that bike and thought WOW, that is stunning. Everything about it is perfect as in styling, looks and, well just everything. An absolute beauty.

[K2-K6]

You can see the dna of that in this one I think

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Maybe that's what they were getting at with its title dna-01, oops dn-01 I meant 

[the-chauffeur]

Resurrecting this because I thought exactly the same when I saw the baby brother with the same styling that Dave Silver has had up for sale since 2017.  Lovely - and quite literally a museum piece - but only for serious collector types at upwards of 14K:

[andy120t]

A man fiddling with his 'spare change' ?

[K2-K6]

Here's the inspiration for that bike, I believe

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I could only clip a low res image but it's an NSU Max which apparently inspired Mr Honda.

[K2-K6]

This article looking at NSU Renfox,  a four stroke 125 racer shows many features that were adopted by Honda within their early race motors and have subsequently become signature elements of design if you look closely.

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Design of shaft to cam,  cam / tappet boxes,  wet multiplate clutch and it's location,  details of waisted barrel and head studs.

NSU made the 250 Renmax too,  a twin and both of these architecture pre-date the Honda by about 10 years.

[Johnwebley]

  I believe Mr Honda explored many of the then top bikes ,and learnt from them,

 I heard he bought several of them to understand the details

[K2-K6]

I've been reading through a whole batch of Motorcycle mags going from 1949 with great technical views on contemporary bikes,  both road and race.

It's these NSU that appear closest in layout as well as philosophy to how Honda evolved their own bikes.  These 125 racers where producing in the order of 112 bhp per litre and revving to 10,000rpm in early 1950s, which Honda closed in on for production 4strokes as they got going in the sixties.

The NSU factory also ran the racers by warming the motor with hot air and heating the oil in a small pan on a primus stove prior to staring the engines in this era too! That attention to tolerancing and metallurgy seems to run through Honda's approach too,  which the other manufacturers didn't appear to pay such detailed attention to. Or at least not to such a precise and extreme level.

Assessment of established industries in that era of reestablishing Japan postwar is mirrored for things like camera and optical in Contax and Lietz of Germany,  sensitised product of film and paper from Kodak and Agfa, watchmaking,  electronics etc, were all studied to subsequently improve apon.