First look at Honda's 2020 Super Cub motorcycle/scooter

Originally published at: First look at Honda's 2020 Super Cub motorcycle/scooter | Boing Boing

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Oh, that’s cute!

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Apparently these step-through motorcycles, or big-wheeled scooters, are called Underbones.

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Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s I had a Honda scooter as my fair weather run around and commuter. Was so much fun. This thing looks great!

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I haven’t actually parked my motorcycle/scooter in the living room since my college days.

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Headline and lede fail. That’s the 2022 edition, not the 2020 edition.

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Give it to me in yellow, and also in this fantasy I’m living in Italy. :thinking:

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I didn’t realize they were still making these models, updated to current standards. Always loved the lines of these lightweight bikes. Great for tooling around a city running errands (max out between 50 and 60 mph). Love the colors, too, that red and cream is lovely.

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There is an anime that’s basically a love poem to these things:

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My first gasoline-powered vehicle (50cc version). Helmets? Leathers? What’s that?

I seem to recall seeing some blue ones, but as in this montage it was basically any colour you liked as long as it was red.

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@frauenfelder - headline needs fixing - 2022, not 2020.

Also, when will there be a battery version?

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Back when I was a motorcycle courier driving a Honda CX500 around Dublin in the '90s, I developed a habit of blipping the throttle, blipping the clutch and blipping the front brake all more or less simultaneously. The reason I did this was to squash the front suspension and lift the rear suspension in order to steepen the steering angle to allow me to turn between the back of one stationary car and the front of the stationary car behind it.

It was a sort of escape mechanism to get out of the lane you were splitting into another more opportune lane. It was just one of those bad habits I picked up driving motorcycles in traffic for 10 hours a day for many years and I didn’t even realise I was doing it.

At least, I didn’t realise I was doing it until the first time I did it on a Honda 90 Cub where, due to the Honda Cub not having a clutch lever and the peculiarities of the Honda leading link suspension system, applying the front brakes causes the forks to extend - the bike did the exact opposite of what I was expecting.

So instead of making a tighter turn, I got an uncontrolled wheelie straight down the lane I was trying to get out of.

I notice the Cubs above are now fitted with conventional telescopic forks and I think this is probably for the best.

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125 cc with fuel injection doesn’t sound bad. Unlike the old Cubs, I suspect that filling the oil with chip grease isn’t recommended.

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I keep a 1966 Vespa/SEARS Allstate small frame scooter in my living room. I stopped riding it about 10yrs ago but I just can’t part with it. So it’s now furniture! Haha

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that flat gray version is kind of neat, but so boring


edit: for those not paying close attention, the passenger seat would be “new”, and I found this in an article

Next up are the 2022 Super Cub 125 engine changes! Visibly you can see changes and Honda also changed the bore and stroke to 50×63.1mm from 52.4 x 57.9mm. The compression ratio was also bumped from 9.3:1 to 10:1. It’s difficult to say what else has been tweaked internally but the transmission is still the same semi-automatic 4-speed. They don’t advertise horsepower numbers so we don’t know what kind of performance changes might have happened throughout these engines changes to the new Super Cub. Hopefully we’ll at least see a small bump in torque and horsepower and this wasn’t all for nothing in that aspect.

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My Dear Wife and I sold our big cruiser bikes during the Covid. We are here in San Diego house sitting, test drove Moto Guzzi, Aprilia, Ducati, etc. The Aprilia Dorsoduro 900 was awesome power and a blast to ride, but in the end not a good fit for me. Next up was the Ducati 1100 Scrambler, this is a mash up of holigan old school bike and the low watt enduro’s of the 60’s - 70’s, only with a 100 ponies to push it down the road. Fun don’t even cover it. Now to my Dear Wife, she settled on the Moto Guzzi 850 special, a true homage to the early 70’s street bikes that I knew no person could afford in those days, a real Christmas tree decoration on wheels. I put some images at the bottom…

P.S. Get out and ride!


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Why US cities are not covered in electric scooters is beyond me. Not the crappy stand up death traps, but basically this with an electric motor. 99% of these are never driven more than 30 miles in a day.

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Oh, we still drive them right through the back slider. Not like there’s anyone to stop us…

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Zero has a strong presence in Southern California. I noticed they are branching out to the burbs too.

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Zero are way too expensive. Not too expensive for what they are, too expensive for a simple city runabout.

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