Desert Storm - The Honda NXR750

The Paris-Dakar race is legendary and so too its creator Thierry Sabine. With classes for cars, motorcycles and even trucks, the general consensus remains that the most adventurous and ballsy competitors have always been those on two wheels.

Starting in 1978, the Rally soon gained momentum with manufacturers realising that the combination of an exotic race allied to building a reputation for endurance and reliability via the winning machines was sales and marketing gold.

Honda took an early interest and by 1982 had taken their first of many victories with Cyril Neveu riding an XR500 production-based machine to victory. But Honda being Honda wanted to develop a racing machine that could dominate – the NXR750 was the result.

In October 1984 Honda management ordered HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) to build a Paris-Dakar winner and the engineers hurried off to visit, inspect and research during the 1985 Rally. The NXR750 appeared in 1986 making a dream debut by winning at its first attempt ridden by the irrepressible Cyril Neveu with teammate, Gilles Lalay in runner up spot.

Running a formidable 1000mm seat height (you read that correctly), the 779cc V-Twin four-stroke, water cooled motor pumped out between 69hp and 75hp across the four years of production.

Neveu won again the following year and by 1988 the event had expanded, and so too the NXR750 presence, with seven riders entered. Somewhat predictably, the HRC machines dominated with Italian team rider Edi Orioli taking top honours.

By 1989 the Dakar had become the focus of numerous manufacturers and Honda began to wind down the NXR project as the road-bike based Africa-Twin debuted, predictably winning the production class.

Four years of official entries and four years of victory in one of the harshest of global racing environments, the NXR750 underlined the famous saying “Honda races, Honda wins”.