Honda's revolutionary new DN-01 has an automatic clutch and just might be, says Tom Robert, the bike that could change our biking for ever
LADIES AND gentlemen, please be upstanding for a minute's silence in memory of an old friend: one who has caused older motorcyclists among us endless hours of frustration in times gone by, but in recent years has reached such a peak of perfection that it seems both sad and ironic that it may not be with us for much longer.
I refer to the clutch, for after riding the revolutionary new automatic Honda DN-01, I fear that traditional gearchanges may be on their way out.
For, love it or hate it - and some bike journalists have hated it - the technology behind the DN is so impressive that it can only be a matter of time before it filters into the mainstream.
And then we will look at our left hands, wonder what we used to use them for, then remember and think back fondly of clutch levers as audiophiles look back on moving coil cartridges and valve amplifiers.
Even at first glance, the DN-01 is radical: a lean, mean flying machine whose low, sleek looks have only one fault that I could find - anyone over 6ft tall will have to duck briefly to check the instruments under the streamlined cowl.
However, it's beneath the glittering surface that the revolution has really taken place. Honda has taken the 680cc V-twin from the Deauville, detuned it to 33bhp so that new riders can leap on to the DN with their licences still hot off the press, and linked it to a shaft drive.
And here's the fun bit: between the two is a seamless automatic transmission. For the technically-minded among you, rather than the usual cat's cradle of pulleys and belts, it uses a solenoid to continuously alter the angle of a swash plate mounted at the end of the drive shaft, connected in turn to the hydraulic pumps and motors which drive the back wheel.
For the rest of us, what that means is that you climb on board, start the engine, then twist, go and marvel as you are thrust towards the horizon with a smoothness previously only encountered by Jean-Luc Picard when he says: "Warp speed. Make it so."
For sure, you are not thrust towards that horizon in the same frenetic manner as you would be in a Fireblade or a Hyabusa, but at a fairly healthy 0-60 time of 5.8 seconds, which, as Honda were keen to point out at the launch of the DN, is faster than a Rolls-Royce Phantom, and quite a bit cheaper.
And if you do get bored proceeding around so smoothly and fancy a bit of a rake, then the swift press of a button changes the mode from fully automatic to a six-speed tiptronic, controlled by a + and - rocker switch on the left handgrip, and guaranteeing smoother and faster gear changes than you'll get from a manual shift, even after a lifetime of practice.
As you'd expect from Honda, this is another flawless piece of kit, and bumps the performance up to an entirely respectable level for a mid-range bike aimed at least partly at first-time bikers who want the fun of biking without the nagging suspicion that they're going to die at any given moment.
Faults? Only that it won't let you change down at high revs, but then again, this is a bike aimed at smooth riding rather than locking the back wheel and power sliding around corners.
The handling, too, is smooth, although the combination of the automatic box and that long wheelbase needs a little bit of practice. All in all, I was deeply impressed by the DN. It's a fabulous-looking bike and a brave move by Honda, which means that even if this particular model ends up as a collector's piece, the remarkable engineering involved will inevitably mean that, as I say, in a few years, you'll see a lot more automatic bikes on the road.
Watch this space. It'll be the one where the clutch lever used to be.