Honda Rune-inspired machine is Souo’s second flat-eight-powered machine.

By Ben Purvis | cycleworld.com

Earlier this year Chinese car company Great Wall Motors burst onto the motorcycling scene with a pair of vast touring bikes powered by the world’s first flat-eight engine made specifically for motorcycles. Now another bike using the same motor has been spotted undergoing final testing in Germany and despite a light disguise it’s clearly a cruiser-style machine inspired by Honda’s Rune and F6C models.

Great Wall Motors has created a motorcycle sub-brand, Souo, specifically for its move into motorcycling, and the company’s first two products were the Gold Wing-inspired S2000ST and S2000GL, the former sporting just panniers, like the standard Gold Wing, the latter equipped with an armchair-style passenger seat and top case like the Gold Wing Tour. While it could be seen as another case of China cribbing from existing designs, there’s a deeper message: The Gold Wing is a flagship model from the world’s biggest motorcycle company, and the S2000 models make a specific effort to go a step or two further than the Honda in every direction. Eight cylinders instead of six. Eight gears plus reverse in a semi-auto, dual-clutch transmission instead of seven speeds from the Honda. More power. More capacity. More technology. And, yes, more weight.

The new model borrows the engine from the existing S2000 models. In those it makes 152 hp from 1,999cc, eight cylinders, four camshafts, and 32 valves, some 27 hp more than the 1,833cc six-cylinder in Honda’s Gold Wing. It sits in a chassis that also mimics Honda’s design—a huge, cast-aluminum beam frame—but for the new model Souo has made some substantial changes to the suspension and the styling to turn the tourer into a cruiser.

Upfront, a first glance gives the impression that the bike uses a conventional fork, albeit huge ones, but a closer look reveals that’s not the case. Despite appearing to have rough cast lowers and chrome stanchions, this isn’t really a sliding fork at all but acts as the main girders in a Hossack-style double-wishbone suspension setup. The existing S2000 models and Honda’s Gold Wing use a similar design, but with cast-alloy girders that make no effort to emulate the appearance of a fork. The single coil spring and damper unit can be seen tucked below the front of the fuel tank. The bars pivot much further back than the steering axis of the fork itself and connect to the top triple clamp via a pair of hefty, chromed linkages, running parallel to the upper wishbone so the steering geometry doesn’t change as the suspension compresses.

Behind the front wheel, the cruiser departs from the tourer with a repositioned pair of radiators, mounted vertically and facing directly into the airflow rather than sitting above the cylinder banks, as they do on the existing S2000 models. The fuel tank is a more traditional shape, reminiscent of the Honda Rune’s, and the same bike appears to be the inspiration behind the thickly padded seat and the oversized dual exhausts with their huge, slash-cut exits. The rear fender, meanwhile, is reminiscent of the more recent Honda F6C design. A close look at that fender reveals that the new bike will carry the name LH2000 and the presence of that logo, along with the Souo badge on the back, suggests that below the camo wrap covering the rest of the bodywork lies a showroom-ready bike.

The wheels and Brembo brakes are direct carryovers from the S2000 models, but the cruiser lacks the S2000′s huge, 12.3-inch touchscreen dashboard. Instead, there’s a chrome-backed circular display, but like the S2000 it has a knurled rotary selector knob on top of the tank to control various functions. The lack of a clutch lever confirms that it has the same dual-clutch, eight-speed semi-auto transmission. As on the other models, the electronics are from Bosch, probably explaining how the near-finished prototype came to be testing on German roads.

We might be used to the idea that Chinese-made bikes are cheap, but that’s not the case with the Souo machines. In their home market, the S2000 models range from the equivalent of $30,000 for the base ST version to $40,000 for the Founder Edition of the fully equipped S2000GL, with the standard GL version splitting them at $33,000. That’s less than a Gold Wing in the same market—the Honda costs Chinese customers between $47,000 and $55,000—but that’s down to import costs and taxes that mean they’re twice as expensive over there as on the US market. Should the Souo bikes ever reach these shores, the situation would be reversed, with the expense of shipping the bikes and increased import tariffs expected in the near future pushing their prices significantly higher. That makes it unlikely that the US market will be under consideration for the brand in the near future.