Sports Cycle

The V-Fours (V4) Engine

When Honda introduced its water-cooled V-four engine bikes for the 1982 model year, pundits predicted the demise of the inline four. It seemed reasonable at the time. These engines have exceptional power characteristics, providing good torque figures and more than adequate horsepower. Plus they are one of the smoothest engine designs in existence.

This engine design has become something of a standard - powering a variety of sportbikes, cruisers, and touring bikes - but it never came close to replacing the inline four. That was probably due to the expense of manufacturing such a complex engine design rather than any inherent flaws with the concept. In service, these have proven to be remarkably reliable motorcycles.

" A V-four engine is an engine with four cylinders arranged in a V-shaped configuration."

If you are in the market for a used motorcycle, a bike with a V-four engine is a safe bet. These bikes have been nearly indestructible. I have a friend who has 125,000 miles on his 1985 Honda 700 Magna as I write this. By the time you read it, he will probably hit 150,000 miles.

Inline Six Engine

For a few years in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, a few manufacturers fooled around with inline six-cylinder motorcycle engines, but these proved to be oddities, footnotes in the motorcycle history books. The odds of you stumbling across one of these beasties by chance are slim; most such machines are now the property of collectors.

"An inline six-cylinder engine is an engine with six cylinders in a row."

The Italian company Benelli produced a 750cc six-cylinder bike, but like many Italian bikes, this is one you’ll probably only see in pictures. More common were the big Sixes produced by Honda and Kawasaki. These were functional motorcycles, but both were victims of their own excess. The width of those six-cylinders just proved to be more bulk than would comfortably fit down in the engine bay, and handling suffered, especially on the water-cooled Kawasaki, which weighed nearly as much as a small car. And if four-cylinder engines are complex to maintain, sixes are absolute nightmares.

The Gold Wing - Flat-Six Engine

The engine Honda uses in its Gold Wing touring bikes is so unique, it doesn’t fit into any other category. The only thing comparable to the same inline six-cylinder version is the engine Porsche's uses in its 911-series. This is a flat, Boxer-type engine, with four or six liquid cooled cylinders, rather than two air-cooled cylinders, like BMW uses. The flat-four and flat-six-cylinder engines used in Honda’s Gold Wings are called flat because their cylinders are arranged in a flat, opposing configuration.

"When Honda introduced its Gold Wing in 1975, it created a new class of motorcycle : the luxury tourer."

These are the smoothest engines used in motorcycles, period, and are a major part of the Gold Wing’s appeal to the touring crowd. They also have a fairly centralized mass, which makes the entire motorcycle easier to maneuver. I’ve seen Gold Wing riders whip their bikes around as if they were riding sportbikes instead of ultimate behemoths weighing twice what the average sportbike weighs.

In 1923, Max Friz, an engineer working for BMW Motorrad, built a motorcycle engine, the R32, a 500cc opposed twin, using basic principles still in use today. Afterwards, This engine configuration earned the nickname "Boxer" because the pistons thrust outward, away from each other, like fists.

This was not the first opposed engine, but Friz’s execution was unique, and the effectiveness of his design makes BMW’s Boxer engines popular to this day. By opposing each other, the pistons cancel out primary vibration, creating a remarkably smooth twin-cylinder engine. And by locating the pistons on the side of the engine, Fritz placed them in the cooling airstream, leading to a cool-running, and thus long-lasting, engine. It’s not uncommon to find BMWs with 200,000 or more miles showing on the odometer.


The success of Friz’s design was not lost on manufacturers from other countries. During World War II, Harley-Davidson used his Boxer design for a military motorcycle, and in 1941, Ural began manufacturing a Beemer clone in Russia. Harley ditched this idea soon after World War II, but Ural is still at it, and you can now buy Ural motorcycles in the United States.

Many people find that the Boxer design offers an ideal compromise between twin-cylinder torque and multi cylinder smoothness. Like the V-twin, a Boxer’s primary characteristic is abundant torque rather than massive peak horsepower. This torque is usually found a bit higher in the RPM range than a V-twin’s, but it still comes on early enough to be useful in the real world. In return, Boxers tend to have more top speed than V-twins. That, combined with the engine design’s inherent smoothness, allows Boxer riders to cruise for extended periods at elevated speeds. You can get yourself thrown in jail on a Beemer without much effort on your part.