12 Facts About Gold Wing

Honda Gold Wing is a series of touring motorcycles manufactured by Honda.

The Gold Wing was aimed at a newly emerging market segment, namely, a new kind of American long-distance rider who was not likely to buy a Harley-Davidson or BMW but who would open their wallets for an affordable machine offering comfort, endurance, low maintenance, and a smooth, torquey, quiet engine.

Project 371 team finally settled on a layout that became the characteristic Gold Wing: a liquid-cooled flat-four SOHC engine, with a gear-driven generator that contra-rotated to counteract the engine's torque reaction.

Consequently, the Gold Wing was born into the world naked, lacking saddlebags and having no place for luggage, without even a windshield.

Gold Wing faced competition from Japan in the form of the Suzuki GS1000 with an inline-four engine, and especially in the Kawasaki Z1300 that had a massive DOHC 1300cc straight-six engine with water cooling.

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Honda hit back at the Milan motorcycle show late that year by announcing a new 1984 Gold Wing that pushed its four-cylinder engine design to its limits.

GL1200I '86 got more small updates, but the significant change was that all Gold Wing engines were being produced in Honda's Anna, Ohio plant from July 1985.

In 1985 Honda marked the tenth anniversary of the Gold Wing by launching a gold-painted Limited Edition model luxuriously equipped with cruise control, auto-leveling rear suspension, an electronic trip computer and a four-speaker audio system.

Ultimately, a redesigned Gold Wing made its debut at the 1987 Cologne Motorcycle Show, 13 years after the original GL1000 was first shown to the public at the same venue, and the GL1500 brought the most changes seen to the Gold Wing series since its inception.

Yet another milestone was reached in mid-1996 when a Gold Wing Aspencade was the millionth Honda motorcycle made in America to roll off the assembly line at the Marysville Motorcycle Plant.

In 1997 Honda brought back an incarnation of the "Standard" or "classic" Gold Wing, renamed the Valkyrie in the US, and called F6C in the rest of the world.

In 2013, Honda brought out a new variation on the traditional Gold Wing, itself being available in two models, The F6B and F6B Deluxe.