LOOK AGAIN: HOT RUMOUR: The return of the Honda Deauville for 2020! According to the French, it’s up to 998cc and it’s on its way…

We showed you this first a couple of weeks ago, but in case you missed this article – well, we figured you’d appreciate seeing it again. After all, it’s a really good bit of gossip going on at the moment, weeks after it first broke…

The fellas over at Moto Station in France have filed the story and they say that TWO separate sources have confirmed to them that a new version of the venerable Deauville is on the way from Honda.

MS says that the new bike is using the current 998cc twin-cylinder motor from the firm’s Africa Twin DCT – so the new bike will only be available without a clutch – and it’ll have a Cardan shaft drive . There’s detail in the information that the French title has from its sources too; the bike’s seat will be less than 800mm tall, it’ll make around 95bhp and it’ll weigh 260kg in road-ready trim. The new Deauville (it’s worth mentioning that there’s no confirmation that the bike WILL be called this, it’s what the French are calling it right now) will also get huge panniers as standard that will be able to hold a full-face helmet.

And electrically-adjustable screen, top-flight electrics and a price tag of around £13,500 are on the cards also.

How feasible is this bike, in reality? Well, we’ve heard for some time that Honda was going to use the current 998cc twin motor from the Africa Twin in something else – the Africa Twin is going up in engine size for next year – and it makes some sense for the factory to pitch a motorcycle between the market that’s interested in something like the Africa and something like, say, a Yamaha FJR. The news from the French guys certainly links up the various bits of information that has been trickling out of the factory for the past year or so.

One thing that we’re interested in seeing is if the new Deauville has the all-the-way-through ‘boot’ of the original which saw the old 650cc machine from 1998 having built-in panniers without backs that linked up across the back of the bike. Sounds daft, worked like a treat on the move and meant that you could carry a lot more stuff on the bike than you thought was possible.