New Honda Rebel 500 — Top 3 highlights

The Honda Rebel 500 is a special motorcycle for India, in the sense, we always wanted it and here it is. Launched at Rs 5.12 lakh, ex-showroom, the Rebel 500 competes with the many motorcycles in the segment, but primarily with the Kawasaki Eliminator and the Royal Enfield Meteor 650.

However, with the comparisons aside, the Honda Rebel is an interesting motorcycle and here are three highlights you should know about the new Honda Rebel 500.

Platform and design

The Honda Rebel 500 keeps it simple — it is built on a steel tubular frame wrapped around the engine. The motorcycle features a low-slung design like American cruisers, a muscular fuel tank, a round headlight, and a single seat.

The chunky side-mounted exhaust and the black finish on the bodywork, exhaust, and engine components give the motorcycle a stealthy look, while the chunky tyres add to the overall cruiser look of the motorcycle.

Features and equipment

Let’s look at the equipment and cycling parts first — the Rebel 500 is suspended by traditional telescopic front forks, dual rear shocks, and rides on 16-inch wheels on both ends. The motorcycle also gets disc brakes at both ends, LED lighting, and tips the scale at 191kg. One of the drawbacks of a low-slung cruiser is ground clearance and the Rebel 500 gets 125mm of space before anything touches.

Moving on to features, the Rebel 500 gets an 11.2-litre fuel tank, and LCD instrument cluster, and gets dual-channel ABS as standard. While Honda offers various colour choices globally, for India, the Rebel 500 is offered in a single Matt Gunpowder Black Metallic paint scheme.

Engine specifications and rivals

The Honda 500cc cruiser is powered by a 471cc, parallel-twin liquid-cooled engine that makes 46bhp and 43Nm of torque. The engine is mated to a six-speed gearbox and there is no quick shifter on offer. As mentioned earlier, the Rebel 500 competes with the Kawasaki Eliminator and a list of Royal Enfield 650 twins.