Das Rant
By C.G.

So Long Honda, It’s Been Real

So long Honda, it's been fun.

I’m not a downhill rider and never claimed to be one. Think I’m just being overly modest? Let me remind you that I’m fat, lazy, and ride a Salsa Dos Niner. If I can successfully descend a street curb without banging my nether-region on the top tube, I’ve accomplished something. Never mind the prospect of bombing down the side of vertical cliff-face against a stopwatch. And yet for as little as I care about the downhill world, I am truly saddened by Honda’s decision to pull out of the sport. Sure their star rider Greg “Big Air” Minnaar was immediately (and wisely) scooped up by Santa Cruz, there are some undeniable holes left behind in Honda’s wake that no other company in the world could fill.

In case you don’t follow any professional motor sport racing, Honda has a reputation for wanting to win. There are few organizations quite as driven or results-oriented as Honda. They innovate, they modify, and they design, and start all over again until they’ve mastered whatever arena they enter. While little is known about their factory NN-01 downhill bikes, I’ve personally heard rumors that they were valued at somewhere in the tune of $90,000. Everything about the bike was under lock and key (another well known Honda trait) and about the only conclusive evidence of its component spec was gleaned from gawking during a race. All I remember is a polished aluminum frame, minimal graphics, an internal drive train, and lots of carbon fiber goodies. Oh and Minnaar winning a lot of championships aboard it.

So maybe Honda wasn’t big on sharing secrets, but I still insist that there was something strangely comforting in simply knowing that our sport was worthy of their attention. I was secretly clinging to the hope that after conquering the downhill sector, maybe Honda would expand their factory effort to include some free riding, Super D events, and maybe eventually get involved in the cross-country scene. Sadly those hopes are now dashed.

What’s even more odd (to me anyway- no stranger to oddity) is that Honda never really branched out with their innovations to conceivably make money through their mountain-efforts. That fabled continuously variable transmission never did make it into production nor did their frames for that matter. While exact replicas of the factory bikes would have been unfeasible thanks to the incredible production cost, Honda could certainly have sold more budget-friendly variants of some of their race-proven technology. If ever there was an opportunity to put the old saying “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” to the test, this would have been it. And yet time after time, we would witness Minnaar smoke the competition only to be swept off his factory bike moments before it vanished into the back of an unmarked van then just as mysteriously reappear at the next big event.

Sure you may be thinking they weren’t interested in selling to the general public but unless I’m mistaken, that is how the economics of the bicycling industry works is it not? Surely Santa Cruz is hoping that thousands of aspiring racers will witness Greg in action then go shell out big bucks on V10.3s of their own. In a way the entire racing effort is a glorified means of brand exposure. Without a product to promote, one begins to question Honda’s motivation in competing in the first place. Was it for honor? For glory? Maybe they were simply hoping that fans would be so inspired by their racing efforts that they would buy an Accord over a Camry? Whatever the reason may be, we lowly consumers never really benefited by Honda’s innovations like I suspected we would have. Plus, their affinity toward secrecy didn’t even allow copycats to “borrow” any innovations from the big H and pass them off as their own. Shucks.

Long story short, news of Honda’s decision to pull the plug on their mountain bike racing involvement hit me pretty hard. While I was glad to hear Minnaar wasted no time in finding employment, the fact remains that Honda’s disappearance runs far deeper than most realize (the only way I even heard about it was through a tiny blurb in another magazine). I wonder if it would be corny to put a Honda wing decal on my Salsa as a silent reminder of what once was. Then again, if anyone from Honda saw how I ride, I’m sure they’d make me remove it immediately.

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