By Joe Berk
The Honda Cub is the most-produced motor vehicle of any kind in the history of the world. Not just motorcycles, but motor vehicles. Honda passed the 100 million Cub mark years ago; today they still offer a Cub in the form of the 125cc Super Cub. That 100 million figure doesn’t count all the knockoffs by Yamaha and the Chinese marques. It’s a staggering number for a staggering vehicular concept. So, if you’re a watch company and you want to produce a watch honoring a motorcycle…well, you know where this is going.
Seiko is the company, and this year they introduced a limited edition of the Honda Super Cub watch. These watches have been nearly impossible to get, so I was astounded when on Christmas photog duty at the mall I wandered into a watch store and what do you know, there it was. It was the only Seiko Super Cub watch I’ve seen and I knew I had to have it. It’s self-winding and to watch weirdos like me it doesn’t get any better than a mechanical self-winding watch. The ticket in was $400, I asked if there was any room in the price, the store manager said no, and I pulled the trigger anyway. I bought it for list price and that was still a good deal.
Seiko is offering a limited run of the Super Cub watch in two colors. I’ve not seen the black one in person, but that’s okay. I like the green and white one better.
The Seiko Honda Super Cub watch has several cool details, including a NATO band, a rear cover intended to evoke a tail light, and a stem that looks like a Cub fuel gage.
Two of your blog boys (that would be Gresh and yours truly) both owned Honda Cubs back in the day (Huber didn’t, but he has an excuse…he wasn’t born yet). I guess that made Gresh and I two of the nicest people you’d ever meet.
To my great surprise, I found a couple of photos of my Honda Cub buried in an old photo album. The image quality is not up to my current standards, but hey, I took these photos with a Minolta C110 camera in the 1960s. With those little 110 film cassettes, these 60-year-old pics ain’t half bad.
I bought the Cub for $50 (a dollar per cubic centimeter) from Zeb Moser (a buddy in New Jersey; RIP, Zeb), rode around on it a little bit, and then sold it for $70 thinking I’d done well. There’s no need to say it, but I will anyway: I wish I still had my Cub.
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