Is this the Supercharged V-Twin Honda have developing?

THE rumours of Honda joining the forced induction party have been circulating for some time now, with full or part patent drawings circulating the net purporting to show the machine in full or partial form.

It seems though that the bike could be closer to being completed than we thought, as these new patents seem to show a fairly complete motorcycle, not just some whimsical motorcycle of obscure design, often done to try and hide the true secrets within.

What we have is an all-new design machine, that could easily lend itself to the naked and sportsbike categories. The frame design is extremely interesting, and not something we’ve seen from Honda for some time. It’s a tubular trellis item, that much is convention enough, but it’s the mounting points and layout that are really interesting. It’s mounted to the top of the engine, effectively using the unit as a stressed member. Using the engine in this way is something that you can only really do with certain configurations of engine, the V-Twin lends itself to it better then most thanks to the torsional rigidity it carries within it.

The seat unit, fuel tank shape and overall lines of the bike look like they could lend themselves perfectly to one of Honda’s Neo Sports Café styled naked bikes like the CB650R. Although as that model itself is almost interchangeable with the CBR650R, the chances of this machine becoming a sportsbike are just as high.

With Honda not coming out to play in the V-Twin segment for many years, the thought of them relaunching us back into the golden years of the VTR1000 SP1 and SP2 era is truly exciting! And to add further intrigue to the patents, they were originally files in 2017 but only published in 2020. That's a big delay, almost enough time to, I don't know, build the thing?