The latest model in SA.
Words: Séan Hendley & “The” Garth Taylor
Pics: Deon van der Linde
The first thing that grabs you with the Goldwing is the sound of that 1800cc flat six motor, even with the standard exhaust it has a throaty burble. Rev it up a bit and it gets sexily raspy, hang the gas wide open and it just gets your blood boiling, reminiscent of a big engined continent crossing grand tourers of the golden heydays when men were men.
Initially it may seem low, slow, wide, heavy and clumsy, but don’t be fooled…. I had a 1976 GL1000 ‘Wing – many, many moons back that I had taken an angle grinder and an arc welder to – You know, when I was young and dumb and full of…. come.. on now, you know I was going to say ‘ideas’. The rage back then was to Americanise everything into the chopper style. Yet, even with all my bastardizations and hackings it was still a surprisingly fun bike in the mountain passes of ET causing many a sports bike a bruised ego or two and much maniacal giggling through my bug splattered grizzly beard and open faced helmet.
30 odd years later I have ridden the various iterations of the Goldwing and each has been hugely fun, but this 1800cc flat six motor is just something special…. In fact, this entire machine is special. I rode a previous incarnation about 4 or 5 years back and even though the motor and chassis were great I was left feeling a little bit cheated by the quality of the finishes. It all felt, dare I say… a little bit cheap. A little bit too ‘plastic-eee’ and flimsy. Not so with the latest version, this is pure premium quality. The cockpit is an exceptionally nice place to be, the rider’s seat cosets your butt in plushness with plenty of lower back support for those long hours in the saddle, it even has seat and grip warmers for those slightly more frigid highveld winter mornings. So does the pillion seat which also sports armrests and a backrest mounted to the top box.
It is no secret that I am a fan of Honda’s DCT set up. Coupled with cruise control and it just makes you want to keep chasing the horizon…. Surprisingly it is not furnished with adaptive cruise control – maybe something for future models. It took less than two or three minutes to work out the onboard computers navigation system and work out where and how to customise the Wings settings to our liking. The SatNav took a bit longer to figure out but worked fine enough and the audio system is unbelievably good with the volume adjusting to speed as needed. The electronic windshield is a simple single finger operation.
What always befuddles me with any of these big tourers, across all brands – bar none, and their acres of bodywork and fairings is the apparent lack of easily accessible storage for things like wallets, mobile phones, licences, Id’s/Passports or any other bric a brac you might need to get to quickly and easily whilst crossing your continent of choice, or simply going through a toll gate. The luggage or more the 3 boots in this case are all permanently integrated into the bodywork and work off a central locking system with light touch electronic locks to open and close all of them. Storage there is not a problem, you do however have to pack all your kit into luggage that fits into the boxes – gone are the days of clipping your panniers and top box off and taking them into your accommodation or using them as furniture for your motorcycle camping as we used to do back in the day. This is a luxury tourer that expects to grace the forecourts and parking facilities of only the best hotels and lodges, not rough necking it in the elements next to some snoring canvas ten
I am a big guy and I like big bikes, the bigger the better as far as I am concerned and the Goldwing is just up my alley. Being a relatively competent and a fairly aggressive rider, combined with my size I am able to chuck it around a bit easier than most people which is part of the attraction for me. I get the giggles when a tupperware torpedo blitzes me in a straight line and then I tilt one of these so-called behemoths into the corner under them and push them wide, teaching them to be a bit more respectful and careful into the next bit of twisties.
The current ‘Wing is surprisingly stable into corners even when I had to grab a handful of brakes when I went in too hot and the corner tightened up on me. The suspension just soaks everything up with no drama whatsoever, so you can have a bit of fun when you hit those mountain passes – you do however need to be cognisant of how low the foot pegs are. Get too enthusiastic into the bends and expensive grinding sounds start emanating from that general direction.
But where this big girl comes into her own is pointing her down some lonesome highway, engaging the cruise control, rolling the windshield up to its highest setting and cranking up the tunes and just zoning into the universe and the joy of being alive and riding a great motorcycle, discovering new places and visiting old memories.
Then one day I had to make a mad dash across town in hectic traffic to make an important appointment and had to lane split quite a bit. Once I had worked out that the handlebars and mirrors were the widest part of the bike, it was a matter of aiming with them and cruising along between the traffic. For the Numpties that refuse to give bikes a bit of space or spitefully closed the gap down there is the fog horn like hooter that is anything but a polite request – It is more of a “GET THE F#&k OUT OF THE WAY DUMBASS!!!!” – especially if I really leaned into it and kept Rob Zombie at full volume.
Needless to say I made the appointment with an easy 10 minutes to spare. Bumbling along with the traffic is just as easy with the DCT set up and the various riding modes. Incidentally, you can feel a significant difference in the modes as far as the torque and power curves are concerned – SPORT mode is obviously the best and that is where I kept it – which seemed to upset the fuel gauge quite significantly. I tried one or two of the ECONOMY modes….. Yawn! They were okay – I suppose, but SPORT is still the best.
We hooked up with our mate, The Garth Taylor, Who is neither tall nor big built in anyway, so polar opposite of me, and went for a ride out into the country and this is what he had to say:
So, an interesting fact is that one of the first bikes I owned was a Honda Goldwing. Very old one in the 1980’s, or something like that. But yeah, I’ve found the difference between the two to be quite vast…. Naturally.
The older one obviously didn’t have as much power. It felt like it sat a bit higher. Also had big fairings and all the bells and whistles for its time. I found it was a lot lighter than the new one just for a start. But there’s so many other differences. Obviously the age of the bike is telling, being very 80’s, like driving a Cortina bakkie as opposed to driving a 2023 Ford Ranger.
I remember having so many good times on that bike, pulling up at traffic lights next to people and that has not changed at all. Swinging my leg over the bike I found that the back seat stopped me from getting my leg over smoothly, I kept getting it caught on the back seat. Once I sat on it you almost felt like I was in a car, I found the seats to be extremely comfortable.
I did not do a long trip on the bike but, I can definitely imagine going on long journeys on that motorcycle would be very pleasant, it just nests you inside that seat. I did not have a passenger but can imagine that it would be pretty lekker for them too because there is almost like an armchair for them to sit in.
The keyless fob is always a great thing for a motorcycle, you just shove it in your pocket, you don’t have to fiddle around with keys every time you get off the bike. Starting the bike was a bit more involved, you had to turn it on the dash and then you got the regular handlebar starting knob.
I found that the motor for me sounded like a big superbike when you accelerate which is too cool, with tons and tons of torque on a motorcycle.
When the bike was parked I was asked to take it out of the parking space that was ridden in frontwards… As any biker out there knows, you always reverse a bike into a parking space to make it a lot easier. But, with this particular bike it was pushed in front and I was like, “How on earth am I going to pull the bike out?”
Then I was shown that there was a reverse gear that I thought was super-duper cool. You just slap the bike into reverse gear and it drives it out, you must just make sure you balance nicely on it because it is extremely heavy and that is one thing that I did notice that the bike felt very, very heavy. Similar to one of the American cruisers where it feels like it wants to lean over and fall. Which I didn’t want because I don’t think I would be able to pick that bike up.
It is so awesome to ride. The automatic gearbox shaft drive is very direct actually.
I played with the windshield all day long. When I was going faster I would lift it up and when I was going lower I would put it down. It was a very hot day when I rode.
The sound system is impeccable. I really, really enjoyed it. Unbelievable how they progressed with that for a motorcycle. Just like I was sitting inside a vehicle with the sound blasting crystal clear, lovely.
I mentioned engine torque before but I just have to say for a bike of its size there is such a lot of power and seems like a very adventurous bike and if you wanted to you could ride this thing around at quite a speed.
The foot pegs touched the ground quite often when I was cornering. Some people want to scrape the foot pegs on the ground – only lean indicators I really don’t enjoy when my feet touch the ground, thank you very much.
Another strange thing and cool at the same time is watching the independent suspension jumping up and down as I rode, I didn’t realise that motorcycle suspension moved so much while riding on a tar road but this one brilliant and was fun watching it and it was smooth it was like riding on an airbag to be honest really, really cool. Extremely stable at higher speeds, like I mentioned earlier it was like I was driving a car.
It was known before as a “ballie” bike, that is why I always enjoyed riding a Goldwing because all my friends would laugh at me and I kind of enjoyed the attention.
I think that this one would definitely be something I would put in my stable.
