Honda SuperHawk CYP77

spacer

CYP77 Police SuperHawk


spacer
Click for Larger Image
Click for Larger Image
Click for Larger Image
Click for Larger Image
Martin Warner's account provides a great context for these bikes.  To date he is the only person I've come across who has actually witnessed the CYP77 bikes in their own era and natural habitat.

"I came across your web site on the CB77s with quite a bit of interest. Though it's been a lot of years since I've owned a Jap bike I started out on Hondas back in the mid '60s. My first bike was a 1964 CA77, (305 Dream).

What was Interesting was at the time (1968) I was living in Beirut, Lebanon and in the Middle East Honda Dreams were extremely popular unlike in America.  One of my friends had a 1966 CB77 bright red and I was so envious.  It was such a beautiful bike, it made the Dream feel like a pig. But I always liked both models a lot.

On several occasions my friends and I would take our various 305s up into the mountains just for pleasure riding. In the city of Beirut the bike cops all rode army green Harleys, mostly panheads. But in the small villages there were a handful of biker cops that rode Honda CB77 cop bikes. They were white with solo seats, crash bars, red lights, and sirens. You didn't see them very often but when I did it was a site. I never knew at the time Honda even made cop bikes. I was never able to get a close up look at one stopped. Since I didn't have a drivers license as I was under age often I found myself running from a biker cop. In the very dense city traffic of Beirut on my CA77 I didn't have an extreme problem squeezing through the unorganized maze of traffic which the big wide Electroglides couldn't fit through. But I wasn't going to risk getting chased in the mountains by cops on CB77's so I kept my distance.

One day I went to Honda Motor Co. head office in Beirut to look at the brand new 1969 CB750. When I went inside I was surprised to

Click for Larger Image
also see a new CB350 cop bike on display. It also was white with a solo seat, crashbars, and red lights. The siren was mounted on the front right crashbar and I remember the speedometer had a white face with 1 km/hr increments on it. I may be wrong about this but it seemed to me the siren was powered by a small generator unit that rubbed against the front tyre. I know some old Moto-Guzzis had this too so I may be confusing it. It had a rack behind the seat for a radio or something. I wished I had photos of the bike now. At this time I had the Honda advertisement brochures for this CB350 and a CB450 cop bikes. They got lost years ago in a move unfortunately.

I became a motorcycle mechanic in about 1971 and was in the business for 16 years. I worked on thousands of 305's of all kinds, but never had a cop model come in, (only the CB750P's). I once had an interesting 305 Honda come in with a dry sump, it had an oil tank on the right side like a Triumph. I was told it was a domestic model only, never saw another one..."

superhawk

Martin Warner       


CB-77 | CYP-77 | Road Test | Riding Log | Literature | Zen | Marketplace | VJ Survey | Links | Home