Honda has announced that its upcoming Hornet will get an all-new 755c parallel-twin engine. The peak output figures stand at 90.5hp at 9,500rpm and 75Nm of torque at 7,250rpm. This engine has a 270-degree firing order and mimics the sound and feel of a V-Twin engine.
This all-new unit is not just a reworked, smaller Africa Twin engine as earlier expected. Instead, Honda has gone back to the drawing board and developed an all-new short-stroke parallel-twin engine while borrowing a few elements from its dirt bike range and reworking them for this platform. The Unicam SOHC architecture (borrowed from Honda’s off-road CRF models) permits this engine to have compact dimensions that help in shaving off weight as well as enabling a higher compression ratio.
It has a 270-degree firing order, like nearly all modern-day parallel twin units on the market. Fuyuki Hosokawa, the project manager at Honda for the upcoming Hornet, claims this uneven firing order allows it to have a broad spread of torque throughout the rev range, while delivering a top-end rush. He claims that this engine will be at home even while riding at city speeds, which should be a boon, particularly in our congested traffic conditions.
With the peak output figures of this engine being what they are, it does not have many direct rivals to speak of, besides the Aprilia Tuono 660 and Honda’s own CB650R. With this bike, Honda aims to break into the international middleweight naked bike market, much of which has been the domain of the ever-popular Yamaha MT-07 and the Suzuki SV650.
This engine is also expected to be featured in the upcoming Honda Transalp adventure bike, but it will likely be tuned to suit that bike’s characteristics and intended usage. With EICMA 2023 set to take place in just a few months, it is expected that Honda will launch at least one of these two middleweight challengers.
