Making 60PS, the RC166 was responsible for two Mike Hailwood world championships (beating Phil Read’s Yamaha in 19), before a bigger bored 297cc version took the 1967 350 title too. One Japanese guy had an oil can, and he was squirting it at them, trying to keep them away.” Everybody came, and they were just crawling all over you. They were screaming! Nobody had heard it before, and didn’t know what it was. “Then they said: ‘When we open the door, push like crazy.’ As it fired up – it was like somebody dropping a bomb. Racing mechanic Nobby Clark reportedly remembered: “We got it into this garage, closed the doors, put the pipes on, oiled it, fuelled it, and pushed it right to the back.

Replacing Honda’s successful four-cylinder 250 and built specifically to challenge Yamaha’s two-strokes, it was secretly launched at the Italian GP late in 1965, with two exhausts removed to hide its true potential.īut nothing could mask the screaming sound of its inline-six. In 1966, despite a two-stroke takeover that had been burgeoning since the early ‘60s, Honda – an advocate of four-stroke technology – successfully placed on the world championship podium in all classes – 125cc, 250cc, 350cc and 500cc – and won the 125cc, 250cc and 350cc championships. The 250cc class winning machine was none other than the RC166, a diminutive six-cylinder racing motorcycle, capable of revving all the way to 18,000rpm. And while the waspy RC142 was the bike with which Sochiro Honda launched his TT takeover, a racing Honda of a different breed lined up alongside it.

At the 2019 Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard we paid homage to Honda, in what was the 60 th year since the Japanese manufacturer’s TT debut.Īmong the cohort of Hondas taking to the hillclimb were a number of iconic models.

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