Ever since Honda surprised us all with their announcement of the CRF450L earlier this year, rumors of a 450L Rally have swirled. At the CRF450L press launch last October, we asked Honda execs if they had plans for a Rally version, following in the pattern of the CRF250L Rally, but we received nothing but a grin and a “no comment” from them.
Now it looks like Honda has another sweet surprise for us coming from the EICMA show in Milan. Honda’s R&D has been hard at work cranking out concepts this year and this one might be the most exciting yet. Details are limited but Honda has put on display a CRF450L Rally concept. Basically, it’s a street-legal replica of their Dakar Rally race bike based on the CRF450L dual sport.
At first glance, the CRF450L Rally Concept looks very similar to the ‘competition only’ CRF450 Rally Bike. It shares a clear windscreen, large navigation tower, low-slung rally exhaust by Termignoni, full-coverage carbon-fiber skid plate, Noguchi seat, dual front fuel tanks that extend low on the bike, and a matching HRC color scheme.
Upon closer inspection though, you’ll notice there are a lot fewer billet aluminum bits, the bulbous rear number plates conceal a tool kit instead of rear fuel tanks, and the Rally Roadbook has been replaced with a TFT screen. We can also see the navigation tower is plastic instead of carbon fiber and it appears to use the standard CRF450L headlight mounted inside the clear windscreen instead of the small bullet-style LED lights on the Rally Bike.
Honda seems to have made as few changes as possible to the standard CRF450L, keeping it basic, reusing the stock mirrors, turn signals, and tail light with a truncated license plate holder. It also looks like they are reusing the same chassis and single-cylinder 450cc engine (45+ hp) found in the current CRF450L. This could mean that Honda’s R&D department threw this concept together in a hurry for EICMA, or perhaps Honda is in a hurry to get this bike to market as quickly as possible.
Honda isn’t known for rushing products to market though, so most likely we’ll see more refinements in this concept coming down the pipe. Currently, we have heard no plans to build a production version of the CRF450L Rally Concept but we expect Honda will test interest first to see if there is a strong market response. The CRF250L Rally also started out as a concept and thanks to overwhelming positive feedback, Honda eventually built the bike. We have a feeling the positive feedback is going to be overwhelming for this concept too!
We’ll be following this one closely and will report back with more details as they come in.
