Current Popularity
Sales for Super Cubs have increased in Japan with upgrades on the engine and the installation of fuel injection for Japanese domestic market models starting from 2007, making it more powerful, more economical and cleaner. With respect to newer, plastic body underbone designs, such as the Wave, the original Cub remains popular.
Cycle World magazine's Peter Egan and Steve Kimball entered a stock Honda C70 Passport in the 1981 Craig Vetter Fuel Economy Run, competing against specially designed high-mileage two wheelers built by teams of engineering students, and an entry from American Honda. The course was a 65 miles (105 km) loop near San Luis Obispo that had to be completed in 1 hour and 40 minutes, give or take 10 minutes, meaning an average speed of 35 mph (56 km/h). Kimball, riding the Passport, won the event through skillful and error-free riding, with 198 miles per US gallon (1.19 L/100 km; 238 mpg).
In Vietnam, Super Cubs are the predominant model of motorcycle taxi, so that "Honda" has become a genericized trademark or metonymy, equivalent to "xe ôm" referring to any motorcycle taxi. In the English speaking world as well, "Honda" was often a synonym for "motorcycle" as a result of the ubiquity of the Super Cub.
The Super Cub was included The Guggenheim's 1998 The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition. In 2006, on the Discovery Channel's The Greatest Ever series, an episode on motorcycles placed the 1958 49 cc Super Cub in first place. James May, a co-presenter on the popular television series Top Gear, bought a Honda Super Cub for the 2008 Season 12 Vietnam special. Author Roland Brown wrote that, "of all the brilliant bikes Honda have built — the CB750 superbike, Mike Hailwood's six-cylinder racers, the mighty Gold Wing, you name them — the most important of all is the C100 Super Cub of 1958."
Read more about this topic: Honda Super Cub
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or popularity:
“You are the current of the frozen stream,
Shadow invisible, ambushed and vigilant flame.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.”
—Thomas Campbell (1777–1844)