Words by Shubham Choukse
Honda has unveiled the 2018 Gold Wing at the Tokyo Motor Show in Japan. Surprisingly, the new Gold Wing is lighter and more compact than its predecessor. It will be available in two variants – base and tour. The Tour variant gets a larger windscreen, electrically adjustable rear spring pre-load and a rear trunk which the base variant misses out.
The new Gold Wing follows Honda’s new design language and features a sharper and bolder design. It gets all LED headlamps, a large windscreen, new dual-tone paint finish, chrome inserts on the engine cover and the exhaust pipes and a traditional Gold Wing seating arrangement.
Powering the new Gold Wing is the heavily reworked horizontally opposed 6-cylinder engine as seen on the previous generation model, but the bore has been reduced by 1mm and the stroke has been increased by 2mm as a result of which it now displaces 1833cc, it now also gets four valves per cylinder and what makes the deal even sweater is the fact that the engine is now 6.2kg lighter than before. The engine produces 125bhp of power and 170Nm of torque and is available with the option of a 6-speed manual transmission or a 7-speed DCT (Dual-Clutch Transmission). It gets Throttle by Wire and Honda Selectable Torque Control as standard. The engine response and the damper settings can be altered via four different riding modes – Tour, Sport, Econ and Rain.
Being the flagship cruiser from Honda, it gets a host of rider electronic aids including electrically adjustable windscreen, cruise control, electrically adjustable rear spring preload, ABS and dual-combined braking system. It also features a 7-inch TFT infotainment display with navigation, bluetooth, USB and Apple CarPlay, an irony as it is a motorcycle.