New Honda Hawk11 Cafe Racer to Debut March 19

A callback to the 1977 Honda HawkII

Honda announced it will introduce a new roadster called the Hawk 11 on March 19. Teaser images show a café racer-styled fairing with a round LED headlight and underslung mirrors.

According to Honda (translated from Japanese), “the HAWK 11 was developed with the concept of a large motorcycle that provides new values ​​and a fulfilling bike life to customers, mainly experienced riders. The body package that brings light driving is combined with elegant styling to express the depth of taste as a motorcycle that is not bound by specifications alone. We will meet the diverse needs of our customers as a model that proposes the enjoyment of manipulating in winding while fully feeling the heartbeat and exhaust sound of the engine.”

From the name alone, it’s a good bet the Hawk 11 will be powered by a version of the 1084cc parallel-Twin engine introduced on the Africa Twin that also powers the Rebel 1100 and NT1100. We’ve brightened up the teaser image to get a better look at the engine, and from this small glimpse, it does appear similar to the CRF1100L‘s Unicam cylinder head.

UPDATE: Honda has released a second video showing more of the Hawk 11. From this new footage, we can confirm it will have a version of the Africa Twin’s engine (the manual transmission version is shown, but there will likely be a version with Honda’s Dual Clutch Transmission), and a similar frame. What we can see of the subframe also looks similar, but the seat isn’t as high as on the Africa Twin. The mirrors are again shown below the grips, but we can now see they are mounted inside the fairing cutouts for the handlebar.

UPDATE 2: Here’s the best look yet of the Hawk 11 in full lighting, showing more details and giving us a better look at the paint:

One interesting footnote about the “Hawk 11” (or “Hawk Eleven”) name is that it doesn’t use the same “1100” nomenclature as the other models that use the engine. The “11” is likely a callback to the 1977 Honda CB400T, which was also known as the Hawk II (the Roman numeral for “two”) pictured below.

At the moment, there’s no indication about whether Honda will offer the Hawk 11 in the U.S. We’ll have to wait until after the March 19 reveal to find out.

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