I looked at my right hand; slowly I lifted it to the throttle, gently does it now, I gripped the rubber hand grip and slowly tightened my knuckles. I moved my eyes towards the road ahead…nothing. No cars, no bikes, no kids on skateboards…nothing to impede my progress. I’d been waiting for this moment for a long time, I was about to unleash the Honda SH 300. Time slowed, I sucked in a last minute breath and twisted the throttle to full open…
Now in comparison to say a 2008 Kawasaki ZX-10R I can’t really say that the SH was fast, not at all. However, for a standard sized scooter the SH is the current benchmark for rapidness.
Initial acceleration was a little on the weak side for the first second or so, then wammo the transmission fully engages and I smoothly accelerate continuously to over 140kph. Inside my helmet a grin forms on my face. This is more like it; this is what a scooter should feel like. Why on earth has it taken so long for scooter manufactures to give us what we actually want?
Someone at Honda Italy made a decision a few years back to build a scooter from the ground up. They threw away all the crappy old scooter designs and started with a clean slate…the SH series was born. Now to say the SH series was a success is a total understatement, the SH is the new benchmark. Honda’s target was total domination of the lucrative Italian scooter market. Target reached, target blown completely to &*^#% bits. In 2007 the SH 150 was the number one selling scooter in Italy, the SH 300 was number two and the SH 125 was number three. Not even Toyota has a sales success that powerful, especially not with a premium model.
