Interesting Facts About the Honda Gold Wing

The Honda Gold Wing is a name recognized worldwide—those big motorcycles that cruise by your windows in the summer, flashing lights and booming music systems. For hundreds of thousands of owners around the globe, they have long been the benchmark of the term “touring bike,” and the history of this golden-winged series spans nearly half a century.

Facts About the Honda Gold Wing:

1. The first prototype of the famous “Gold Wing” was code-named M1 and was developed back in 1972. The engine for it was designed by engineer Soichiro Irimajiri, the same person who created racing engines with 5 and 6 cylinders for the company.
2. The first mass-produced model in the series was the GL1000, released in the distant year of 1975.
3. The first “Gold Wings” were equipped with 4-cylinder flat engines. Later, the number of cylinders was increased to 6.
4. The Honda GL1500 was developed before the GL1200, but the company management decided that the market was not yet ready for a 1.5-liter motorcycle. Therefore, the GL1200 was created, which was more technically advanced than the GL1500. However, the former was produced until 1987, and the latter until 1998, even though it was developed earlier, in the late 1980s.
5. Not all Gold Wings have reverse gear. The Interstate versions do not have it.
6. Starting with the GL1100 model, launched in 1980, all motorcycles in this line have been equipped with tubeless tires.
7. The first true touring bike in the modern sense of the word was the GL1100 Gold Wing Interstate (1980), which featured a plastic fairing and earned the name “Gold Wing.”
8. In the 1980s, other Japanese companies tried to compete with Honda in the touring bike market, but only Yamaha achieved relative success with its XVZ1300 Venture Royale model. On the other hand, promising but less popular models like the Suzuki GV1400 Cavalcade and Kawasaki ZN1300 Voyager didn’t last long on the assembly line.
9. Before the Gold Wing 1500 was launched into production, the company built 15 different prototypes, each undergoing thousands of hours of testing and numerous various tests.
10. The durability of these flat engines is enormous. There are plenty of examples in the world with mileage exceeding 1 million kilometers.
11. The GL1500 Aspencade, released in 1996, was a milestone model. It was the millionth motorcycle produced by Honda.
12. Adjustable air suspension was introduced in the Gold Wing as early as 1988.
13. The GL1800, produced from 2001 to 2018, had the longest production run among its model lineup. Strictly speaking, it is still in production, but after a major overhaul, it is more of a different motorcycle under the same name.
14. In 2006, the Gold Wing became the first motorcycle in the world to be equipped with an airbag.
15. Today, all Gold Wings are exclusively manufactured in Japan. However, until 2010, some units were assembled at a factory in the United States.
16. In 2018, the updated GL1800 became the first production motorcycle on Earth to be equipped with a 7-speed automatic transmission (a 6-speed manual transmission is also offered).