The Honda CT90 has an interesting folk tale of a creation story: Honda America’s first sales manager, Jack McCormack (who would go on to create the American Eagle line of bikes) noticed that a Honda dealership in Boise, Idaho was selling more Honda 50cc bikes than all 6 dealerships based in Los Angeles. The Boise dealership had swapped out the street tires for knobbies, put in a larger rear sprocket, and marketed it as a trail bike for farmers. Honda America sent one of these examples back to corporate, and the CT bikes were born.
The 1968 model was the key to Honda’s success with the CT bikes. Other companies had developed similar dual sports, but they required you to get off the bike and manually switch sprockets, depending on if you wanted highway cruising or trail crawling abilities. Honda advanced the game by replacing the secondary sprocket with a reduction spur gear, giving high and low ratios on the fly. While you still had to get off the bike to switch between hi/lo, it was now a much easier process. The 8 horsepower powerplant was the same out of the Honda S90, but nearly everything else was well-built for dual-sporting. The price of entry was just $330, a relative bargain compared to the competition. The one exception was the leading link suspension, which was immediately replaced by normal forks. Want to learn more about what makes this CT90 so special? Check out an excellent writeup here from MotorcycleUSA that might as well been have written about this exact bike!
This specific Honda CT90 is a 1968 K0 model – the rarest of the CT90s (it was the one year with the reduction spur gear and leading link forks). It’s mostly original, though the mirrors don’t match. You’ll get the rubber mud flap on the front fender, a large chrome rear rack, a newish chain and a new battery. It runs great, and I absolutely adore this thing.
Find this Honda CT90 for sale here on Craigslist for $1,250 in Vancouver, Washington.
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