Honda Built the Perfect City Bike and Then Didn't Charge For It

I was worried about this one. The CB750 Hornet was already the most fun Honda on the market, and the fastest way to ruin a bike like that is to automate part of it. Take the clutch away from a punchy 270 degree twin and you usually end up with something sanded down and polite.

That is not what happened.

The E-Clutch does not shift for you. It works the lever for you. You can sit at a red light in first gear with your hand nowhere near the bar and the bike just waits there. Pull the lever yourself and it hands control straight back, no button, no menu, no mode change. Everything that made the Hornet good is still here. You just get the option of never touching the clutch again.

Here's the thing. Honda charged nothing for it.

Performance Highlights

That 755cc parallel twin is the whole reason this bike works. Ninety horsepower and 55 pound-feet does not sound like much written down, and then you roll it on and the thing tries to stand up. It is a wheelie monster. I spent the 40 to 80 pull sitting as far forward as I could just to keep the front tire on the ground, and it still ran 4.04 seconds in second gear with traction control switched off. The old Hornet without the E-Clutch ran 4.00. Dead even. Those ten extra pounds of clutch hardware cost you nothing you can feel.

Point it at a corner and it goes, immediately. Wide bars, a low seat, and a bike that changes direction the second you think about it. Honda added weight this year and I could not tell you where they put it.

The Showa fork is soft around town and settles as soon as you lean on it, which is exactly right for a bike that lives on the street. Full sport suspension is miserable in the city. You feel every bad patch of road and you resent it the whole way to work. This is not that.

The brakes are the one place the bike runs out of ambition. The Nissins do the job. They stop it, they are predictable, and that is where the story ends. On a motorcycle that begs you to ride it this hard, I want more bite at the lever than this gives me.

Rider Experience & Tech

You physically cannot stall this motorcycle. That sounds like a party trick until you spend an hour in stop and go traffic and realize your left hand has been doing nothing the entire time. In traffic it is a cheat code.

The seat is where the bike asks for something back. It is wide enough to support you, but it is thin, and after about an hour it goes hard. That is the limit on this thing. Not the engine, not the wind.

Five riding modes, three-level traction control with wheelie control built in, and a 5-inch TFT that is not fancy but responds the instant you press something. I will take a plain screen that reacts over a clever one that lags, every single time. My real complaint is that there is a ride by wire throttle on this motorcycle and no cruise control button anywhere near it. If the throttle is already electronic, there is no excuse.

One oddity worth knowing before you go hunting in the menus: the mode order runs user 1, user 2, standard, sport, then rain. Rain should not be sitting on the far side of your custom modes.

The Chase Score & Final Thoughts

With a Chase Score of 75/100, the 2026 CB750 Hornet E-Clutch lands in Great territory, and it gets there on what it costs at least as much as on what it does. Eight thousand dollars with the E-Clutch included, and nothing else in this class will carry you through rush hour without touching a lever.

Buy it if you ride in the city and you still want something that is genuinely fun on the way home. Skip it if you are brand new, because that engine is torquey enough to bite you, or if you want a comfortable seat and a cruise button for long highway days.