Here in 2025, I can tell you that I've had more than one conversation in recent years about whether Honda's lost its way. Me, I'm clearly a fan of the brand, and I have the VF500F carbs sitting on my workbench to prove it.
But although they'll probably make me tear my hair out, I also can't deny that they're from a time when Honda, as a company, took more weird and wonderful chances than they've done in a while. It's just the facts; if you've been around as long as Honda has, sometimes you take chances, and other times you don't.
I mean, on the one hand, you have Honda's seriously insane stab at oval piston bikes in the NR 500 and NR 750. And of course, the RC30. But on the other, you have an increasingly large number of current models that don't seem to change much but their colors from year to year. Sure, you might like one paint and graphics scheme more than another, but is that excitement? Is that innovation?
Is that an ultra-rare Honda EZ Snow? No. No, it is not. Well, yes, the link goes to a Honda EZ Snow, but the seemingly unchanging lineup of bikes mentioned in the previous paragraph isn't. You get what I'm saying, don't you? I mean, the Honda EZ Snow was clearly Honda going out of its mind in the early 1990s, and I, for one, couldn't have been more pleased the first time I learned that this thing existed.
Previous RideApart colleague Jason Marker wrote about it back in the day, because a) it's wonderful, and b) if you know the guy, it's extremely up his street. But because it was a Japan-only motorcycle release, and because not everyone is the type of nerd who majored in Japanese language in college, there's been some conflicting information in the English-speaking world about this bike.
Thanks to the auction listing that's up at Iconic Motorbike's site right now—as well as some original Japanese-language advertisements for the EZ Snow that are included as part of the auction for the lucky winner—I can now fill you in with a few additional details!
According to the ads here, this colorway from Honda was called Shasta White. Crucially, the papers say, just 150 of these were to be made and sold exclusively in the Japanese market. For a mega-huge international OEM like Honda, even back in 1992, that really isn't very many.
Here's the part that may absolutely kill you though, especially when you see the kind of prices they're commanding in the new millennium. When it was new, the Honda EZ Snow's MSRP was a comparatively paltry 360,000 yen. In 2025 US dollars, that's about $2,361.
However, to keep things completely fair, if adjusted for inflation, that amount would be around ¥425,035.31 in 2025. That, in turn, would convert to about US $2,788. A truly paltry sum compared to the eye-watering $18,725 that it's listed for in the Iconic classified section right now. But hey, true love (and super exclusive rarity) isn't cheap, right?
Would you sell a kidney for a Honda EZ Snow of your own, or are you distressingly sane? Leave a comment below either way, and let us know what your favorite weird Honda is.
