Honda Super Cub C125

I've ridden a restored '62 C125 through Tokyo backstreets and rural Gifu, and nothing quite prepares you for how naturally it works — you just twist and go, no clutch lever, no ceremony. The centrifugal clutch feels crude by modern standards, with a noticeable lurch off the line until you learn to feed the throttle gently, but within an hour it's completely intuitive. That 49cc OHV pulls surprisingly willingly up to around 55 km/h before the buzz becomes honest vibration, and the pressed-steel frame corners with a tidiness that heavier machines can't touch on tight city lanes. The brakes — small drums front and rear — demand planning ahead at anything above 60 km/h, and parts sourcing for a genuine first-gen requires patience and a good network.

I've put close to 12,000 km on a late-seventies C50 variant across Southeast Asian backroads, and the refined OHV unit is genuinely a step up from the earlier pushrod setup — smoother above 7,000 rpm, less heat soak in traffic, and the carburetion improvements mean cold starts no longer require a five-minute ritual. The semi-automatic three-speed is still the cleverest transmission ever bolted to a 50cc machine; you never once miss a clutch lever. At honest highway speeds it'll sit at 70 km/h all day without complaint, though asking for 90 means you're already hearing the engine cry — top speed is a theoretical number, not a cruising one. The 48 kg dry weight means a tired rider can muscle it out of a ditch single-handed, but that same lightness turns every passing truck into a weather event.

The jump to overhead cam transformed what was already a legendary commuter into something noticeably crisper — throttle response above 6,000 rpm stopped feeling like you were asking a favour. I ran one of the early 12V models through two Vietnamese monsoon seasons and three Indonesian dry spells, and the electrics finally stopped being the bike's Achilles heel; the old 6V system was a nightmare of dim headlights and mystery drain issues. Fuel consumption is almost offensively good — I was regularly seeing 60-65 km/litre in mixed city riding — and the semi-automatic gearbox still feels like a minor miracle after a decade of using it. The honest downside is that 90 km/h is a theoretical number you'll hit once, tailwind and downhill, before the vibration convinces you 75 is civilised and 80 is your personal ceiling.

I put 14,000 km on one of these across two years of daily urban commuting and the occasional weekend errand run — it never once left me stranded. The fuel injection on later models cleaned up the cold-start fumbling that plagued older carb Cubs, and you notice it most on chilly mornings when it just fires and idles cleanly without choke fiddling. That said, 3.7 horsepower is genuinely all you get: merging onto anything faster than a side street requires patience and a willingness to accept your place in the food chain, and the 75 km/h top speed is flattering on a good day with a tailwind. What keeps me recommending it is the automatic clutch semi-transmission — it's intuitive within minutes, virtually indestructible, and lets you focus entirely on traffic rather than gearbox management.