21-03-2025
The Honda Gold Wing Was Made For America
Road & Track is decidedly not a motorcycle magazine, but we do appreciate the beauty and culture of the finest two-wheeled machinery. So when Honda sent an invite to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Gold Wing, the gold standard of cruiser motorcycles, the answer was a definite yes.
As R&T's resident cycle nerd, I'm going to start out on a limb here: I've long believed the Gold Wing isn't just a motorcycle. It is the motorcycle of note from the last half-century, certainly from an American perspective.
It wasn't uninhibited enthusiasm that birthed the Gold Wing in 1975, but rather a careful corporate decision-making process. The newly minted executive vice president of Honda, Kihachiro Kawashima, decided the company needed a two-wheeled flagship, one that would combine technical innovation with high levels of rider comfort.
Powered by a 999-cc flat-four, the first Japanese water-cooled four-stroke, the '75 Gold Wing made 78 hp and 61 lb-ft of torque and propelled a bike that weighed a very chunky 602 pounds dry. It's the obvious place to start this history lesson, swinging my leg over the flat, one-piece seat of this beautiful early version and hitting the roads of Daytona Beach, Florida.
Picking the veteran Gold Wing off its stand required the strongest heave for the whole ride, as it became ever more eager to roll between my legs once moving. Reaching the bars required no more than a slight raise of my elbow, and initiating a lean was done with a two-finger pinch of force on the thin bars.
What's most important on a Gold Wing is smoothness. The power comes in gradually and linearly, rising steadily as I pass 4000 rpm on the white-needled gauges. It didn't have that coming-on-cam feeling that our favorite Japanese performance cars possess, instead mimicking the torque curve of a BMW inline-six. Reputedly, early Gold Wing dealer demonstrations included the placement of a coin onto one of the protruding cylinder heads, where prospective customers could watch it sit unmoving as the engine was revved.
There was only one realm where this Gold Wing's age felt obvious: braking. Neither the front lever nor the rear pedal provided any real feel, and the retardation felt consistently weak to somebody more used to modern motorcycles. I found myself pressing harder as the ride went on, gaining confidence in the modern Continental tires more than the dual solid discs up front.
The clutch shared this sense of inadequacy, as early Gold Wings were notorious for shedding their stock units. According to Rob Doyle, Honda's Northeast PR representative and the co-owner of this model, the warmer the clutch gets, the more it needs to be slipped. Bogging down at stoplights turned into a symphony as I spun the serenely balanced engine past 3000 rpm to get rolling.
Contrary to its younger siblings, Honda's first Gold Wing has no clever features or fairings. It was a starting point for touring—saddlebags, wind protection, and upgraded seat comfort was on the owner, at least for the first few years. But a trip to New Mexico changed all that.
"In about 1978, we had a gentleman at American Honda, his name was Ikuo Shimizu," says Lee Edmunds, a former Honda communications manager who gave a fascinating historic briefing. "His big philosophy was something we call 'go to the spot.' It means you can't really understand what's going on in the market unless you actually go and see it."
Shimizu traveled to the Golden Aspen Rally in Ruidoso, New Mexico, to learn firsthand what customers needed and wanted. The result was vastly improved feedback to the Japanese-based R&D team and then 45 years of steady evolution—increased displacement and cylinder count, an air suspension, and numerous innovative and groundbreaking luxury features.
One counterintuitive development was moving the engine forward. As former Cycle World editor and Gold Wing connoisseur Matthew Miles explains, each passing generation has seen the engine advance within the frame, a contradictory concept for those who believe in optimal weight distribution through a middle- or rear-mounted engine.
"You can see it, whether it's in the drawings or in the actual treatment of the seats, just how important the passenger section is. If you have this tiny little seat, it's a problem. So they're always trying to move the engine forward for balance," Miles told me.
That mission is one of versatility for the modern Gold Wing. It's shell suggests a loping, open-road approach to riding, while the hardware—as Miles points out—is pure sport bike.
For the half-century milestone, the 2025 model year of the fifth-generation Gold Wing came with only a few upgrades, primarily the ability to sync a smartphone wirelessly through a helmet-mounted communication device and get Apple CarPlay on a seven-inch screen between the dials. Honda is also offering a 50th Anniversary limited edition, which I tested in two-pew Tour form.
The generational spread means there is now 1833 cc of flat-six power, the engine making a wail reminiscent of a base Porsche 911. Okay, so the motor's power figures look low for its size—125 hp and 125 lb-ft. But in reality, this is more than enough to get the modern Gold Wing Tour's 845-pound chassis moving, whether that effort is funneled through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission or the classic six-speed manual unit.
Getting settled onto the behemoth of a bike wasn't scary, but the first inches of movement felt intimidating as the better end of 1000 pounds gyrated between my legs. It takes some muscle to get it up off the stand and even more to push the wide clip-on bars around a tight parking lot. But, when starting, full clutch engagement coincides with the bike becoming weightless. Wrapped in an almost ironic, woody-wagon-esque paint scheme, my dual-clutch 50th Anniversary tester went from snapping turtle to a dachshund puppy in a matter of feet, as speed and the gyroscopic effect melted away its heft.
Of course, the modern Gold Wing is a much more sophisticated motorcycle than the original one. The 2025 rides on a double-wishbone front suspension with a pro-link rear system that connects to a single-side swing arm and adjusts for both passenger and luggage weight. Directional ability is also much improved. Little muscle is required to dip the Gold Wing into both tight and sweeping corners, the lean gradient more rewarding the quicker you ride.
Sure, the weight is apparent as speed bleeds off, requiring a strict adherence to the core tenets of motorcycling: looking where you want to go, dragging the rear brake during low-speed maneuvers. But the ride stayed glassy whether trailing pickups on I-95 or puttering around a parking lot.
The combination of the quiet engine and generous wind protection from the windscreen and fairing package meant cruising at 70 mph didn't elicit so much as a breeze. The dual-clutch transmission shifted sweetly, and Honda even allows the ability to manually shift should you please. Brakes were also excellent—with dual six-pot Nissin hydraulic calipers up front and a single three-pot at the rear, slowing down was as easy and unflustered as speeding up, the lever feeling as if it communicated every groove in the discs as they passed through the pads.
But it is the luxuries that really define the Gold Wing, especially for more casual riders. As well as the two-wheeled novelty of Apple CarPlay, my tester had seat heaters, an audio system, and even a winding windscreen—all functions I imagine are hard to let go once you've become used to them. The dynasty's enduring success has long been proved, with more than 700,000 having been built by 2017. Prices now start at $25,975 for the low-seat six-speeder and rise to $34,175 for the priciest airbag-equipped twin-clutch 50th Anniversary Tour version.
My biggest takeaway from experiencing both ends of the Gold Wing story was the fundamental rightness of the line to American tastes. Confidence is key to being a good rider, but it can often take thousands of miles to build the faith that a motorcycle can survive a full emergency stop or deliver its engineered lean angle. But the Gold Wing puts those worries to rest on your first ride. It commands respect, but it treats you as a peer too. That's why you see them on just about every good road the country has to offer.
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