On the right is a 2008 Pearl White US model, with chrome extras, and on the left an absolutely unique colour called "Last Week's Papal Robes"
A white GL1800 is to be sold officially in UK for the first time – but not just yet.
As I forecast in an earlier article on this Blog, included in HondaUK’s stockpile of GL1800s there are colours not previously seen in UK except personally imported US-spec bikes. It now appears there were two such colours – and at long last this includes white.
White has always been a very popular colour for GoldWings and many have been imported from the US. With a bit of extra chrome here and there it looks really good. Indeed so committed was my friend Bill to having a white bike that when he replaced his white GL1500 and couldn’t buy a white one, he bought a blue one, stripped it of all painted parts before it turned a wheel and had them resprayed in pearlescent white. The colour he chose has a golden sheen to it. (Don’t tell him I said so but it’s really stunning.)
So at last, and it’s official, HondaUK will be selling a white GL1800. Officially the new colour will be called Glacier Pearl White but it’s probably exactly the same as the 2008 Pearl White colour (or rather color) sold to the US market. Honda are not above calling the same paint scheme different names in different markets – remember Candy Red (UK) and Durango Red (US) which were identical?
Glacier Pearl White is being held back in UK for the 2010 model year, so you can’t have one yet. No information is available about the number of white bikes which HondaUK have up their sleeve but it is likely to be small, maybe fifty or so at most.
Monterey Blue - already released for UK
Another new UK colour, Monterey Blue, has been already released and can be ordered now, but if you want a white one, you’ll have to wait.
The 2010 model colours have already been released in the US, so maybe it won’t be all that long before Glacier Pearl White is released here.
Pity we never got Pearl Yellow in UK, a colour which was extremely popular in the US. It was so sought after when it first appeared in 2001 that Appleyards had a batch of six UK GL1800s re-sprayed in that colour to meet demand. Pearl Yellow has been re-introduced as a US colour for 2010 but it is extremely unlikely that you could persuade Appleyards to paint any more bikes yellow; if you want a new Pearl Yellow GL1800 you will have to resort to a personal import; this is now the only way to get a new or second hand US model GoldWing into the UK, the Dealers cannot risk doing it.
All GL1800s sold in UK since 2007 differ only in colour and there are unlikely to be any technical changes until the new model appears. The TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) fitted to 2009 and 2010 US model GoldWings will not appear on UK GoldWings at all. It’s quite likely that all the remaining UK GL1800s were manufactured during the 2008 model year run or earlier.
Navi System will get no map updates
One thing is for sure, the new GoldWing will have a completely different satnav system. Garmin, who supply the electronic brains behind Honda’s Navi system on the GL1800, have announced that they will not be supporting older units (like their own Street Pilot 2610) with new map releases beyond the current version, which is 2009.
Their newer units, including the latest for motorcycles, the Zumo 660, all use the City Navigator NT series of maps. So City Navigator Europe 2009 is to be the last non-NT version ever.
This is probably an expedient commercial decision by Garmin rather than an insurmountable technical barrier but one of the considerations will have been the impracticability of squeezing every larger map data files into units designed with limited memory and processing capacity. The Navi system can handle less than 2GB of map data. After version 8, City Navigator Europe exceeds this for the whole European mapset.
The remaining stocks of GL1800s which HondaUK are holding all have City Navigator Europe Version 8 – which is two versions older than the latest one, and no option to update these maps is available through official Honda channels. The Navi system on the GL1800 was never very impressive as a motorcycle system anyway (because you can’t download routes onto it) but it’s now become clear that it’s also a dead end as far as map updates are concerned.
If you want maps to cover the whole of Europe with City Navigator Europe Version 2009 you have to resort to splitting them between two memory cards. So you would have to swap cards when you reach the limits of your home card’s coverage, as we used to have to do with the original, small capacity, Street Pilot III.
This need for two cards may be partly why Honda haven’t offered any map update options for the Navi system, although there are also issues of having to create update cards indiviudually for a particular bike. There is no option for Honda to sell an update card which would work on any bike.
While there is nothing wrong with the remaining GL1800s which HondaUK are selling – the GL1800 is now a fully developed and extremely capable grand tourer – except that you will not get up to date satnav maps with it. They will be over four years old.
So if you buy a new (or should I say “unused”) GL1800 in UK during the next two years or so, you can at least lean on the Dealer to supply it with 2009 maps. There is an unofficial (but perfectly legitimate) fix available to install 2009 maps and if any UK Honda Dealer needs information about how to get this done they are most welcome to contact me and I will point them in the right direction. Pity Honda aren’t supplying it officially but then it would probably cost a lot more.
Latest information about the new GoldWing model
It is of course an open secret that a new GoldWing model is on the way. The GL1800 was launched in 2000 in the US (2001 in UK) and so it will have had a reasonably long run by the time it is replaced (probably for 2011 in the US) it will have almost equalled the incredibly long-running GL1500.
Production of GL1800s stopped when the Maryville Factory closed in March this year but a stockpile of extra GL1800s were built prior to that closure to cater for the 2010 model year. Most of these are being held in Honda’s Distribution Warehouse in Chicago but HondaUK were reported to have a stock of 220 bikes already in UK, enough to see them through until the new GoldWing model is released. HondaUK have been selling only around 120 GL1800s per year.
Nothing official of course but I heard via an official source, unofficially, that the next GoldWing will have an overall look not which is not dissimilar to the GL1800 but with larger panniers, a 2.2 litre engine, an automatic/selectable gearbox similar to that of the DN01 and loads of electronic gadgets.
The article in last weeks MCN about the new replacement for the Pan European may give some indication of what else in the way of new technology could feature. The dynamic microphones and helmet intercom leads used with current GoldWings are pretty old technology, so there’s a likelihood that these will disappear in favour of wireless technology such as Bluetooth. CB radio is pretty ancient technology too of course, but it’s still in such widespread use that it might be considered necessary to continue to offer it in the US. But my bet would be on a more modern, UHF-type bike-to-bike radio system, in which case we can hope that UK models would get it too. No need for a big whip aerial with UHF radiops but would we al want them anyway, for appearance?