CX500 Turbo from Kingston Customs

Turbocharged CX500 from Kingston Custom Motorcycles

Yes, it’s a Honda CX500. Another one… of 1232 Cafe racers built this year based on this small V-twin 🙂 Boooooring…

But wait… What is that under the seat? Behind the engine?

A Turbo! That’s new…

Actually it’s not. As there was a short period of time in motorcycling history (beginning of 80’s), about 2-4 years, when Japanese tested the turbo concept on motorcycles. It was the CX that Honda turbocharged during this “competition”…. These super rare examples are now pretty valuable. Why didn’t they last?

2 reasons:
1. Performance was not as good as expected. The extra horsepower came, but at a cost… Turbo lag was killing the driveability… as before the turbo got spinning, the bikes were really sluggish… way worse than naturally aspirated ones.

2. The price. Putting a turbo to a 500-750 engine – made the bikes to cost around what 1000cc cost. Considering the cons (point 1) – there was not much interest on the market.

But this CX500 is so cool. Not only the turbo looks badass, but it must sound amazing! Does anyone have a video of this beauty on the road?

Enjoy!

CX500 Turbo from Kingston Customs
CX500 Turbo from Kingston CustomsCX500 Turbo from Kingston CustomsCX500 Turbo from Kingston CustomsCX500 Turbo from Kingston Customs

Source: Kingston Custom Motorcycles

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