THE HONDA V-4
ORIGINS
Eleven seconds from glory: the Honda FWS1000
The V-4 engine is the beating heart that powered Honda to three decades of racing glory. The line of storied V-4 Hondas stretches from the Interceptor and VFR production motorcycles to the RC30 and RC45 hom*ologation-spec superbikes to the V-5 and V-4 RC grand prix racers. Yet the engine that would become an emblem of its corporate pride did not begin its life wreathed in glory. It didn’t begin with luck on its side, and its story didn’t end in Hollywood fashion with champagne spraying in slow motion from the top step of the podium. Still, it was painfully close. Honda’s first round-piston V-4 racebike was the FWS1000, a barely remembered footnote to the very story it began.
In 1982 Honda was wandering in the desert. In the most important racing series in the world, it was a defeated giant, brought low by its own ambition. Caught between the desire to maintain its commitment to four-stroke technology and the need for race results that would reinforce the brand’s global status, Honda ultimately underestimated the strength of its two-stroke competition. Honda wanted redemption.
And Honda wanted that redemption to happen at the Daytona 200, the most prestigious roadrace in America. The company’s last 200 victory had been in 1970, more than a decade earlier, when regulations first allowed 750cc motorcycles to have overhead valve trains instead of side valves. That year Dick Mann gave the Honda 750 Four its first AMA win in its first attempt. The following year, success eluded Honda when Mann defected to BSA and gave the British marque its final 200 win. From then on, archrival Yamaha built a decade-plus stronghold of Daytona dominance. Honda’s 1981 Daytona 200 outing ended ignominiously when Freddie Spencer’s CB750/900F-based RS1000 threw a rod on the out lap following his first pit for gas, forcing him to retire while leading the race.
In the same period, Honda’s return to grand prix racing had been marred by dismal results. The NR500, its oval-pistoned four-stroke experiment, had proved to be a racing flop; an ambitious, innovative flop, but a flop nonetheless. In search of its first 500cc win, Honda conceded defeat, reluctantly setting aside its corporate disdain for the two-stroke engine and unveiling the NS500 V-3 for the ’82 season.
The NR500 was practically doomed from the start. The top brass at Honda who conceived of the project weren’t engineers. They couldn’t comprehend a performance differential between twoand fourstroke racing engines that their engineers couldn’t overcome. While their belief in their engineers’ talents is commendable and not unfounded, ultimately, as one Honda executive said, “it was like trying to put a man on the moon.”
But Honda, which had made such great technological inroads with its racing and production motorcycles in the previous decades, wanted to prove that it was still The Great FourStroke Motorcycle Manufacturer. So while Honda R&D was developing the NS500 two-strokes, Honda Racing Service Center, the precursor to Honda Racing Corporation, looked at a preproduction V-4 cruiser as its best hope of building a Daytona 200-winning four-stroke racer. Thus the FWS1000 (RS1000RW) was born.
The FWS was a herald of things to come, a bike that would pave the way for a new generation of Honda four-stroke racing motorcycles. Based on the Honda VF750F Sabre, it had a water-cooled 90-degree V-4 engine with gear-driven overhead cams, wet-sump lubrication, and a dry multiplate clutch from the NR500 sending its power to a five-speed transmission. The production bike’s tappet adjusting rocker arms were used, but fashioned from titanium, as were the con-rods. A 78.0mm by 53.6mm bore and stroke brought displacement up to 1,024.4cc. It produced around 150 hp, or close to two times more than the stock Sabre. Dry weight was listed at 165 kilograms (363.76 pounds).
The FWS was big and heavy compared to the air-cooled sit-up endurance racers American Honda was used to racing, and its snaking stainless steel exhaust looked like an afterthought. But from its first shakedown, it was evident that RSC had delivered a package capable of winning right out of the box.
To ride this new breed of machine, Honda recruited ace Mike Baldwin to race alongside future world champion Freddie Spencer. Spencer remembers, “The big V-4’s power delivery was amazing, perfectly complementing what I’d always focused on most: the transition from the point at maximum lean angle to the critical moment of initial acceleration. The linear powerband was an evolution compared to the inline CB’s narrow powerband and brutal throttle response. That is everything!”
Weeks before Speed Week, American Honda brought the FWS1000 to Daytona for testing on the oval banking. Spencer was running 2:05 lap times on Dunlop tires designed to go 52 laps or more. Later, Honda spooned on Michelin rubber and Spencer went two seconds a lap faster in five-lap sessions. Honda chose Michelin for the 200.
By race weekend, Honda knew it made the wrong choice. While Michelin’s soft option tire was suitable for Honda’s RSI000 inline-fours, the soft compound couldn’t cope with the weight of the FWS and its prodigious acceleration in stints longer than five laps. Michelin’s hard option tires didn’t suffer from the same overheating problem, but couldn’t provide the level of grip Honda needed to get an edge. Spencer lost three seconds per lap with the harder tire.
Come race day, Kenny Roberts was on pole on a factory Yamaha YZR500, followed by Baldwin and Spencer on the FWSlOOOs. Eddie Lawson, the reigning AMA Superbike champion, had qualified fourth on his Kawasaki KR500. New Zealander Graeme Crosby, racing for Giacomo Agostini’s Marlboro squad on a factory-built Yamaha OW31 750 two-stroke, was fifth. Randy Mamola was sixth on a Suzuki RG500.
By the end of the first lap Roberts, Baldwin, and Spencer were jostling for position out front. Mamola was out of the race, taken out in the first corner by Crosby. By lap 10, Roberts’ YZR had seized; his race was over. Good news for the Honda boys, except they had troubles of their own. From his position right on Baldwin’s tail, Spencer could see his teammate’s tire shedding chunks of tread rubber and exposing the white cords beneath.
Spencer pitted on lap 12 for new tires and then again 14 laps later, at which point’s Marlboro squad on a factory-built Yamaha OW31 750 two-stroke, was fifth. Randy Mamola was sixth on a Suzuki RG500. By the end of the first lap Roberts, Baldwin, and Spencer were jostling for position out front. Mamola was out of the race, taken out in the first corner by Crosby. By lap 10, Roberts’ YZR had seized; his race was over. Good news for the Honda boys, except they had troubles of their own. From his position right on Baldwin’s tail, Spencer could see his teammate’s tire shedding chunks of tread rubber and exposing the white cords beneath. Spencer pitted on lap 12 for new tires and then again 14 laps later, at which point the team mounted the harder option rear. Despite time-sapping pit stops, Spencer managed an impressive second-place finish behind Crosby’s Yamaha—impressive, but still second. Baldwin crossed the line in fourth.
Although the FWS 1000 was arguably the class of the field, Honda failed to win the Daytona 200. Again.
“The FWS was a herald of things to come, a bike that would pave the way for a new generation of Honda four-stroke racing motorcycles. ”
Across the pond, the bike didn’t fare any better; Joey Dunlop and Ron Haslam tried the FWS 1000 during practice week at the Isle of Man TT, but opted for the tried-andtested inline-fours for the race.
In the FWS1000’s swan song at the following year’s Daytona 200, Baldwin and Steve Wise finished fourth and third respectively. Spencer and Haslam raced bored-out 540cc NS500 grand prix bikes.
The FWS’ biggest success came at the hands of Mike Baldwin, who rode it to the 1982 AMA Formula 1 championship and racked up victories at Loudon, Pocono, and Sears Point along the way. Racing fans took notice, and the sound of the big V-4 was still ringing in their ears when Honda rolled out the new VF750F Interceptor for the 1983 Daytona Superbike race.
And that was it. The Interceptor filled the podium. Spencer stood on the top step with Baldwin second and Dave Aldana third. John Bettencourt finished fifth. Honda had its Hollywood ending. The Interceptor won the first six races of that year’s AMA Superbike championship—and then won the championship for five consecutive years.
Honda’s Daytona 200 drought finally came to an end in 1985, when the 200 was reclassified as a marketing-friendly superbike race for production-derived bikes. Freddie Spencer, by then matured into a world champion, took the win on the Interceptor. Honda’s V-4 legacy was cemented and the Interceptor became an icon. The FWS1000, however, faded into obsolescence and distant memory, the fate of all but the most successful built-to-race prototypes.
The FWS came tantalizingly close to becoming an icon in its own right. If Honda hadn’t ditched Dunlop, the FWS could have ended Honda’s Daytona 200 drought. It could have broken Yamaha’s dominance. It could have been the bike that gave Spencer his first 200 victory with an unforgettable come-from-behind performance.
In the race it was built to run, Spencer and the FWS 1000 crossed the line just 11 seconds after Crosby’s Yamaha. Just 11 seconds shy of becoming one of the great Honda motorcycles, a part of racing lore.
But the checkered flag is black and white. First place is the winner; second place is the loser, “ifs” and “could haves” are the difference between first and second, between winning and losing, between household names and anonymity.
So in the great pantheon of luminous Honda V-4s, the FWS 1000 is the forgotten first, a footnote remembered fondly by the few who raced it. It’s a footnote that explains just how far Honda was willing to go to chase even a single victory. As far as footnotes go, this one is glorious indeed.
