Quick: Name the best-selling motorized vehicle in history! Ford Model T? Nice try, but Henry only sold 15 million of those. Toyota Corolla? Better, but so far, Akio has only moved 44 million out showroom doors. No, the greatest-selling motorized vehicle in the history of the world is the Honda Super Cub, which surpassed 100 million sales in 2017 and is still going strong. Even the Vespa scooter has only sold 18 million and change.
Why has the Honda Super Cub done so well? Simple: it’s efficient, reliable and cheap. “Nifty, Thrifty, Honda 50” read the ad in New York Magazine back in the day. Plus, it’s cute as heck. And the Beach Boys wrote a song about it, “Little Honda:”
First gear! It’s all right
Second Gear! I’ll lean right
Third gear! Hang on tight
Faster…
I don’t know how old you are, but I was alive when that song came out. I lived one beach down from the Beach Boys and I wanted a Honda. Everybody wanted a Honda. The famous ad campaign, “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda,” had been out a year by the time Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote that song. American Honda had been in the United States all of five years, offering two motorcycles and the Super Cub. The first Honda motorcycles, the Benly and the Dream, were problematic, with failing clutches and blowing head gaskets. While Honda was sorting those troubles out, the small staff at the fledgling subsidiary noticed that everyone liked the little Super Cubs they were scooting around on. So they decided to sell those, too. Soon after, America fell in love with the Super Cub. In fact, the world fell in love with it, a love that helped Honda pass 100 million Super Cub sales two years ago.
Now, after several years off the U.S. market, the Super Cub is back. It looks just like the original, with the front fairings, the scooter-cute handlebars and the enclosed back half. But where the original had a 50-cc engine, the new Super Cub has an electronically fuel injected 125. It’s mated to a four-speed semi-automatic transmission –- there’s no clutch handle, you just shift the toe-heel lever all the way down for neutral then up through the four gears. How smoothly you shift the lever with your left foot translates directly to how smoothly the bike responds.
The front brake has ABS, something even the brightest Honda engineer couldn’t have fathomed in 1958 when the Super Cub debuted in Japan. Same with the new bike’s LED lighting, keyless Smart Key ignition and tubeless tires.
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