Honda Highness CB 350 First Ride: Should Royal Enfield be worried?

Ever since a 26 year old Siddhartha Lal took over as the CEO of Royal Enfield, their motorcycles have become less clunky, more reliable and somewhat more modern. The result? A segment with just one player growing extremely fast. Fast enough for a certain competitor from Japan to take notice: Honda!

Honda have made their intentions very evident by adding the word Highness to the CB 350's name. (His or Her "Royal" Highness, you see?). The CB in fact looks like the love child of a Royal Enfield Bullet and a Triumph Bonneville. There is generous use of chrome and metal all around and it gives the CB a gleaming presence no matter which angle you look at it from. It's a simple, clean and classy design. The all led lighting adds the "modern" to this modern classic design. What else is modern are features like a slipper clutch, traction control and bluetooth connectivity. With the classic roadster design nailed to perfection, the CB 350 is a joy to look at from all angles.

Straddle the CB and the familiarity with the Bonneville increases. You sit comfortably upright with a slight reach to the handlebars while the pegs sit neutrally underneath you. Depending on your height, your knees would be bent at 90 degrees or higher and that makes the perch extremely comfortable. What else is comfortable is the long, generous and well cushioned single seat. The 800 mm seat height is a comfortable reach for most riders. The bike also feels light to push around while still being seated in the saddle. Given the long 1441 mm wheelbase, the turning radius is surprisingly small and taking u turns or carving your way through traffic is effortless.

Powering the CB is a low compression, 350cc long stroke, air cooled, single cylinder engine with overhead camshafts and fuel injection. Long story short, the motor feels, beats and sounds very much like a Royal Enfield 350cc mill. There is ample of torque low down the rev range and the bike pulls very cleanly off the line. The power delivery is linear till it gets to the higher end of the rev range where it tends to taper off and flatten. The rumble from the exhaust is music to your ears and eggs you on to pull harder in each gear. The generous amount of low end torque also enables the CB to run very tall gear ratios. This gives the motorcycle a stress free ride, improves the top end performance and helps in better overall fuel efficiency as well. Contrary to popular belief, I really liked the way the CB is geared and I did not feel the need for frequent downshifts. Coming from a high compression KTM 390 motor, this 350 felt like a breeze picking up from low speeds in higher gears. When you do have to downshift though, the slip and assist clutch is the lightest not just in its price segment but across all motorcycles I've experienced. Just ine finger is enough to operate it. Add to that a typically slick and precise shifting Honda gearbox and you'd be shifting gears just for the fun of it. 

Now coming to the suspension, the front gets conventional telescopic forks while the rear gets twin hydraulic shocks. Pretty basic hardware on paper but it does its job surprisingly well. The ride quality is neither too harsh nor too wallowy. There is maturity in the way the CB deals with bad roads. What's more important is that the plushness in ride quality does not come at the expense of stability. The bike feels stable and planted even closer to the 100 kph mark. The long wheelbase and the excellent bite and feel from the brakes also add to your high speed confidence. The CB comes fitted with 19 inch 100 section front and 18 inch 130 section rear tyres. Flick it into a corner and it's not the quickest to turn in but it goes there willingly. However, you do need some experience with the motorcycle before you can start extracting the most out of it in the twisties. The front end is raked out and feels kind of light when throwing it into a bend. Also, all said and done, it is a heavy motorcycle and needs an experienced hand for it to be ridden enthusiastically in corners. This is probably the only performance area where the Royal Enfield J platform (the Meteor for now) has a slight edge over the Honda. It's not necessarily faster in corners but it definitely feels friendlier. 

This is the 21st century and what's a motorcycle without tech and gizmos right? Honda has given the CB bluetooth connectivity. However, it's an audio only connectivity and you need to be connected to a bluetooth communication device to get updates like turn by turn navigation. Once connected, you can toggle things like music control, making, answering and rejecting calls, auto reply sms, etc. with the toggle switches on the handlebar itself. It also gets a USB type c charging port. Another thing worth mentioning is the switch gear itself. On the left you get four way toggle buttons. The horn and signal lamp buttons are interchanged in the layout. The pass light switch acts as a toggle switch between high and low beam as well. On the right, you get an engine kill and starter button combination switch and a hazard light switch. You also get dual accelerator cables. These may seem like quirks initially but these are nifty touches that you'd come to appreciate eventually. There are two variants on offer and the higher one gets dual tone colours, traction control, bluetooth connectivity and........ a dual horn set up. Since the price difference is not significant, this is the variant one should go for. 

Lets sum things up. The Honda CB 350 will wow you with its design, it will wow you with its quality and it will wow you with its refinement. It is for the mature rider who understands that character need not come at a sacrifice of quality, practicality and reliability. In making the CB 350, Honda seem to have taken all the flaws of the old Royal Enfield Classic and ironed them out. Should Royal Enfield be worried though? Had there not been the new Royal Enfield J platform, this would have been the better product out and out. The potential of the new J platform though, really makes things interesting. But this is not about Royal Enfield vs Honda. I don't think Honda intends to make the CB 350 a mass market product like the Royal Enfield 350s. What it aims to do is carve out a niche inside a niche and get newer people into the segment. And to that effect, it has surely delivered. So if you're looking for a motorcycle in that Rs. 2.25 lakhs kind of range. Not just a Royal Enfield. Bajaj, TVS, KTM, any motorcycle and if you are lucky enough to have a Honda Big Wing in your city, go test ride the CB 350 and you might just end your search right there, book it and live happily ever after.