Honda RC181
Mike Hailwood
Honda entered the 500cc GP class in 1966 in an effort to break MV Agusta’s eight year stranglehold on the title.
The RC181 was the bike used and the riders were Mike Hailwood (who had won the previous two years’ titles for MV) and Jim Redman.
Although Redman won two races and Hailwood three, it was Giacomo Agostini who finished on top with three wins and five second places – Hailwood failing to score in the first four races.
1967 was to prove a classic season with Hailwood and Agostini battling it out all year with both finishing even on points with five wins each. Agostini being handed the title by virtue of his three second places to Hailwood’s two.
The 1966 bike was good for 85 hp at 12,000 rpm and weighed 154 kg. The following year saw those figures improve to 93 hp at 12,650 rpm and 141 kg.
The RC181 was renowned as not the best handling of bikes – “Bloody awful” to quote Hailwood, so after pre-season testing in Japan revealed no progress on this front, he commissioned Ken Sprayson of Reynolds to design and make a new frame for the start of the ’67 season (Honda did reinforce their design after Hailwood’s feedback).
Sprayson was of the opinion that the problem lay in Honda’s use of an open-cradle frame (to lower the centre of gravity), so designed a large diameter single-loop frame (that allowed clearance for the exhausts), along with major bracing at the head-stock and swing-arm pivot.
Honda decreed that the bike was not to run in Grand Prix so Hailwood used it in several non-Championship events, the first of which was in Rimini.
He finished second to Agostini after running off the track, then won the following race at Imola. With Honda’s exit from GPs at the end of the ’67 season, and Hailwood being paid by them not to race for ’68, that was pretty much the end of the bike’s career.
The original magnesium carburettors were “lost” before the current owner purchased the bike so aluminium items are now fitted.
It is now a part of the Solvang Vintage Motorcycle Museum in California.
