Only 250cc, but ten straight race victories thanks to six cylinders, six carburettors and six exhaust pipes! This is the rival-slaying Honda RC166
Words Simon de Burton Photography Honda
Motorcycle-loving Octane readers who grew up in the UK during the 1970s and early ’80s might remember those heady days when any 17-year-old could legally jump aboard a 250cc motorcycle and blast off into the sunset with L-plates blowing in the breeze – despite the fact that many 250cc Japanese two-strokes were capable of touching the magic ton.
The Government put an end to that in 1983 by restricting learner riders to bikes of no more than 125cc, but some who cut their teeth on those 100mph rice rockets might avow that their Yamaha RD250, Suzuki GT250 or Kawasaki KH250 (and so on) was the best quarter-litre motorcycle ever made.
None, however, even came close to the bike that surely was the best 250 of all time – Honda’s truly remarkable RC166, a six-cylinder, four-stroke racer weighing a gossamer-like 112kg and which produced 60bhp at a screaming 18,000rpm and topped-out at more than 150mph.
How everyone laughed when Soichiro Honda first turned up at the Isle of Man TT races in 1959 – and how they stopped laughing two years later when the Japanese upstart returned to win both the ultra-lightweight and lightweight classes with bikes ridden by Mike Hailwood (and to take the next four places in each, just for good measure).
But even that was a mere taste of things to come because, after amazing the world with the 250cc four-pot RC162 of 1961, Honda went two better in 1966 with the introduction of t
