Classic presentation of the Honda CL 350

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Classic presentation of the Honda CL 350

More casual off-road version of the CB

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Honda’s two-cylinder scramblers were a huge hit in the US, and the Honda CL 350, launched in 1968, won the most. It was hardly more suitable for the terrain than its sister CB. Just somehow more casual. Gold?

M.an occasionally wonders whether globalization tends to make everything the same. Hollywood films everywhere, Asian clothes everywhere, Google and German SUVs everywhere. Stories like this would then be impossible. The fact that 250cc is booming in one market because strange insurance regulations make motorcycles of this displacement just affordable, while elsewhere you naturally go for the sovereign, equally inexpensive and technically identical 350cc. Or that on one side of the Atlantic everyone pretends to win desert races every day, while on the other they chase after that Grand Prix feeling with retrofitted M handlebars.

At least in the 60s it was like this: While Honda in Germany didn’t even get the idea of ​​offering Scramblers and their street 250s were selling like sliced ​​bread, the Americans just as often chose the clunkier version of the popular Honda Twins and, if possible, those with them the larger displacement.

90,000 CL 77s were sold in the USA

The desert races, which are as popular as they are spectacular, had already seduced some English people into adventurously adorning one or the other twin with small tanks, larger front wheels, wide handlebars and – very importantly – raised exhausts. The BSA Spitfire can be regarded as particularly successful and also commercially successful, and Soichiro Honda set his CL 72 on its tracks in 1962, the derivative of the epoch-making 250 CB 72. When it got a big sister with exactly 305 cm³ displacement, namely the CB 77, there was also a CL variant of it from 1965. Both sold quite well, with a total of nearly 90,000 North Americans grabbed it.

Then everything became new. At least on the engine side. The successors introduced in 1968 also had a built crankshaft cranked by 180 degrees and a drive chain running between the cylinders to the overhead camshaft. But the aluminum cylinders are no longer inclined forward, the camshaft rotates directly in the bearing blocks of the cylinder head, the mixture is now prepared by modern constant-pressure carburettors, and the gearbox controlled by a gear primary drive has five instead of four gear internships. The 250 got a little more bore (56 instead of 54 mm) and correspondingly less stroke (50.6 instead of 54 mm), with its big sister 64 mm bore at the end for 325 cm³ – the old CB / CL 77 only had 305 brought.

With a new ultra-short stroke

As usual, Honda brought a road and an off-road version of the new Twin, both of which can be started either electrically or by kick. Wait, will CL connoisseurs object, electric? In fact, on the CL 72 and 77, due to the front frame strut prescribed for them, there was no longer any space for the starter located in front of the crankcase. It fell away, a plain sheet of metal covered the opening in the case, but the off-roaders got a slightly longer kick starter. From then on, such unfriendliness was no longer necessary, because Honda now consistently relied on a closed frame with pressed sheet metal backbone plus tubular beams for both CB and CL and built this right around the electric starter.

The differences between the two versions lie in the details: The Honda CB 350 has an 18-inch wheel rotating at the front, the Honda CL 350 measures 19. The handlebars and tank obviously vary, especially the wonderful exhaust system. As with the BSA Spitfire, the manifolds cross in front of the cylinder and then strive backwards in parallel. In contrast to the BSA and the early CL 72/77, however, small silencers had to be integrated. Who knows whether they will ultimately ensure that a CL350 engine with 33 hp delivers three hp less than the otherwise identical CB drive. After all, it produces maximum power and maximum torque at slightly lower speeds, and besides, it is still enough for 100 miles per hour. That counts. And was possibly more important than any off-road talent in the purchase decision.

More street bike than scrambler

These may have been a bit larger than the CB, because the ground clearance had actually increased thanks to the 19-inch front wheel and high-set exhaust system. But a well-dimensioned double seat bench and pillion footrests attached to the frame as well as a complete set of instruments and main stand indicate rather low ambitions. And so the colleagues of the US magazine “Cycle” found on their first excursion in 1968: “The scrambler isn’t really a scrambler at all.” They advocated classification as a street scrambler and by that I mean, the The Honda CL 350 might have little harm on wavy dirt roads, but it is rather unsuitable for stick and stone. And too heavy on top of that.

Perhaps Honda saw things similarly, because as early as 1969, with the SL 350, which was around 15 kilograms lighter – it was the top model of an entire off-road family – a real specialist came into the spotlight, with a double loop frame, longer suspension travel and ultimately even a 21-inch front wheel could take a lot. Really dual purpose. Tea Honda CL 350, on the other hand, gained its double benefit of being tame, absolutely suitable for everyday use and a cool look, not unlike today’s heavy large enduro bikes, and it brought US customers almost crazy for half a decade: between 1968 and 1973 around 215,000 units sold, plus a good 90,000 SL, both together a lot more than the CL 250 that was also on offer. Incidentally, the normal CB 350 came to 319,000?

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