In the Lounge-and-lunge world of power cruisers, Honda’s new Magna may not be the lowest bike around, but it is the longest. Parked on its sidestand, the Magna hangs just above the height of a man’s knee, a lanky peninsula of rubber and chrome and painted metal jutting out into the street - stretching 66 inches between axles.

With its tail section low and flat, swinging aboard the Magna feels like clearing the Molehill Hurdles. You fall inside the saddle, confront the asymmetrical clocks, needles tacked onto the gray crinkles finish of the dash under glass faces. A flick of the starter button stirs the water-cooled V-four to life instantly, inevitably.

This marvelous engine - smooth, crisp, compact - delivers a broad, flat band of power as distinctive as the signature of its sound. Five years ago the Magna took the gattling-gun thud of the V-four to American streets, spawning a tide of Maduras, V-Maxes and other Magnas...all history in 1987. Only the mid-sized VF custom - the first, perhaps the last and arguably the best - remains. The Magna 700, even in startling new clothes, captures the essence of a genre in passing: the V-four-powered performance cruiser.

The success of that first Magna assured the breed its curious, paradoxical appeal. Into a steel-tube cradle frame drawn as long, lean and elemental as a chopper/dragbike was bolted a power train as avant-garde as tomorrow: a 90-degree V-four with four overhead camshafts, 16 valves, water-cooling, hydraulic clutch, six speeds and shaft drive.

With the power cruiser’s antipathy of shapes and technologies, success for early brute bikes was measured in the more or less peaceful reconciliation of warring elements. The mating of a traditional-look chassis with a potent engine created new challenges for designers - like steering a fat back wheel with a skinny front and still preventing the bike from leaping of the road when a turn appeared or the throttle was applied.

Riders, drawn by the harmony of High Style and High Tech, hopped aboard to discover that, though not as brutal as the big-bore cruisers that would soon follow or as versatile as the standard bikes which would all but disappear, the middleweight Magna worked quite well.

The following year, marketing pressure for the Magna bled off into alternate niches as Honda introduced its Interceptor, Shadow twin and the 1100 Magna. In 1984, tariff-mandated de-stroking dropped a claimed three horsepower off the top, but added 500 rpm to the VF700’s redline. The Magna’s second year of production as a 700 brought restyling touches - a longer wheelbase, lower seat, larger-diameter fork tubes, different wheels. Still the Magna remained essentially unchanged from the original VF cruiser form: longer and leaner, with the Early Industrial density of the V-four engine.

The Magna’s mechanicals in many ways created the very problems Honda engineers took such clear delight in slating for the Corporate Solution. Take, for instance, the gas tank(s): Since an airbox occupied the traditional fuel-cell space, the VF acquired a supplementary tank beneath its seat. An electric pump trickled the. fuel uphill to the bank of carburetors nestled in the crotch of the engine’s Vee. A warning light indicated low fuel, but the VF offered no reserve.

Getting the seat height down into the lizard zone meant running the frame rails literally through the rear cam cover, which was split for clearance. With space at a premium, the option of monoshock linkage was clearly out: dual shocks were fitted. The Magna’s tool kit got stuffed into a thin tray behind the sissy bar. Solutions, yes, but achieved at the cost of both complexity and inconvenience.

With the new Magna, Honda has used redesign as an opportunity to address the interests of economy and simplicity as well as high style. Despite a larger-capacity airbox, the 700 holds a full 3.4 gallons of fuel in a single cell behind the steering neck - no pump, no warning light, and a petcock that turns on 30 miles of reserve. Beneath the louvered sidepanels one finds ample space for essentials - a coolant reserve tank on the right, a plastic pan for tools and modest knick-knacks on the left.

At the Magna’s core, the V-four has undergone changes that affect the engine both technically and visually. Gas station mechanics will rattle their ratchets in disbelief at the suggestion that this motorcycle is only a 700. No more blacked-out cases here - the new Vee, lounging like some chromium colossus in the stretched and lowered hammock of its frame, looks massive enough to rise and dine on 1100s.

Riders will feel much the same when they twist the Magna’s large-grip throttle for the first time. The packed-down punch of the VF engine is crisp, with instantaneous response and liter-bike strength until the revs climb to 7000 or so and the power levels out. Honda claims 80 horsepower at 9500 rpm from this engine, the three horsepower lost to destroking now stacked on top of a stronger mid-range.

In fact, the new 700 behaves much like the original, full-sized 750C, also factory-rated at 80 horsepower. (The standard-oriented VF750S Sabre, strapped to the Kerker dyno in 1982, made 65 horsepower at 10.000 rpm at the rear wheel). At the drag strip, our ‘87 VF ran through the quarter mile a tick quicker - 12.25 seconds at 107.95 mph - than the first Magna, four - tenths and a mile per hour up on the VF700C tested in ‘84.

What gave the new Magna its shot in the arm? Certainly not the engine’s basic pieces: crank, pistons, rods, transmission and the block of 32mm Keihin constant-velocity carburetors - two sidedraft, two downdraft - are all unchanged. This engines greater strength appears courtesy of its four-valve heads. All ports have been reshaped, the inlet side tapering to intake valves grown one millimeter from last year’s poppets, now 37mm. Exhaust valves remain at 23mm. The Magna continues to use screw-and-locknut adjusters on forked rockers for setting valve lash.

Inside the heads, new cams with 0.7mm less lift, their timing juggled for less overlap, build power in the midrange. Honda claims the new cams are primarily responsible for notching the VF’s redline down 500 rpm to 10,000, again like the original Magna. Reshaped combustion chambers drop compression from 10.5 to 10.2:1, and our Magna performed without a trace of ping on regular unleaded fuel.

Other changes include installation of Honda’s new ignition system, first seen on last year’s VFR750, which feeds a digitized signal to the black box computer for plotting ignition timing curves. The new system, Honda claims. is less affected by both manufacturing tolerances and the occasional magnetic interference of extreme cold weather. A 12AH battery has been substituted for the previous 14AH unit, and the engine has also sprouted a pair of crinkle-finish black metal shells on either side, just aft of the radiator. The pod on the right contains the cooling system’s thermostat housing and sender for the dash-mounted temperature warning light - no gauge on this VF; the left side, empty on our Magna, will hold the evaporative emissions hardware for California-only models.

The Magna’s engine remains as jewel-like as ever. It starts, hot or cold, with an ease and surety that has your thumb just briefly touching, rather than holding down, the starter button. You listen for the pop of ignition with no more anticipation than you would in flicking a light switch. Carburetion is dead on throughout the rev range - no flat spots or sputters and, though a slight popping comes through the pipes on trailing throttle, the crispness of the Magna’s response and the broad, flat curve of its powerband produce excellent roll-on performance. In third gear, under full-throttle acceleration from 45 to 75 miles per hour, the Magna is a match for most 750 sport bikes, and the four-pot VF simply clobbers the Shadow V-twin. Tall cogs compromise the Magna’s acceleration in the upper two gears, but the bike still pulls with authority, and cruises - gone is the “overdrive” indicator light - at about 4300 in sixth gear.

At highway speeds, as in city traffic, the V-four engine is a personable and willing companion, smooth to 6000 rpm or so - good for 80 plus in top gear - where vibration begins a light strum through pegs and seat, increasing in intensity to 9000 rpm where it submerges again into stillness. Shifting is positive and precise, and the Magna’s clutch, though slightly grabby, with a narrow engagement band, is strong and tractable. Without adjusters, however, the hydraulic clutch and front brake lever are a stretch for fingers reaching out from milwaukee-style grips.

During brick cruising, the silky smoothness of the engine’s upper register can have lead-wristed riders in frequent contact with the Magna’s two-stage rev limiter, a system also installed on Honda’s new Hurricanes. When 11,000 rpm registers on the VF’s electronic tach, the computer automatically cuts ignition to the front cylinder bank and retards the rear. At 14,000 rpm, all spark ceases. Even pressed solidly against the first stage of the rev limiter, however, the Magna retains its glassy texture, more remarkable still when one considers that this Magna’s engine, unlike previous VF’s, is solid mounted in the frame.

On the highway, the sound from the Magna’s exhaust system disappears into the wind blast. At trolling speeds, the quartet of pipes produces a solid staccato drum. One staffer disliked this beat, and felt it amplified by the upswept pipes which directed the noise up inside his fullface helmet. Others liked the sound. These pipes are loud, certainly, but the engine itself is such a silent mechanism (the generator cover has been thickened this year to further reduce sound escaping from the engine block) that R&D, in the face of the 80-decibel limit, can devote itself to developing the throaty V-four roar rather than covering up extraneous noise.

The VF’s exhaust layout was designed to accentuate the multi-cylinder look and distinguish the Magna from a host of V-twin style cruisers. And, unlike many motorcycles that conceal massive collector boxes beneath their engine cases, the Magna is a true four-into-four system with narrow-gauge cross-over pipes joining the tubes running from front-to-rear and side-to-side. With ample clearance, the absence of a center stand must be the result of economic rather than engineering considerations.

Economic forces, and the challenge to bring a new model in with a price tag only $100 higher than last year’s VF, dictated much of the Magna’s form. The 700’s tubular steel frame, for example, is basically unchanged. Two tubes swing back from the steering neck, then angle down to triangulate with the swing-arm pivot and shock upper mount. As with the original Magna, the left downtube, which also serves as a channel for coolant, unbolts, providing access to the engine bay.

The big change comes in at the steering neck. The Magna’s front end has been kicked out five more degrees from vertical than previous VF’s. This 700’s rake stands at 35 degrees, with a full six inches of trail. The Shadow 700 has slightly longer trail, but rarely have we seen such figures, even from full-on style cruisers. It is this radical steering geometry, in combination with a swing arm elongated 1.2 inches, that stretches the Magna’s wheelbase almost half a foot over last year’s 700, to 66 inches.

The Magna’s new fork illustrates Honda’s approach to the market economics of ’87: Thicker 39mm tubes stroke a long 6.1 inches, but the air caps and TRAK anti-dive fitted to last year’s Magna didn’t make the new-model cut. This year, with slightly stiffer springs but softer damping rates, the Magna’s front end does nose dive under hard braking, and we miss the opportunity to tune fork preload to changing road and riding conditions. Nevertheless, the fork offers an adequate compromise for most roads and riders.

The Magna’s rear end is more problematic. With only 4.0 inches of rear-wheel movement to work with (up 0.1 inch over last year), engineers gave the Magna’s twin VHD shocks extremely stiff springs to control shaft effect and prevent bottoming over bumps. Five-ramp collars permit preload adjustment, but position one provided best even for two-up riding. Solo the Magna’s suspension stayed unduly harsh.

The new Magna rides on resized wheels: Honda tossed the 18-inch front spinner from last year’s VF in favor of a 19-incher; the thinner 2.15 rim holds a 100/90 Dunlop. The Magna’s back wheel follows the prevailing trend toward disc wheels - a 15-inch solid casting holds a massive 150/80 tubeless Dunlop tire;a spun aluminum cover plate press-fits onto the wheel’s left side.

Those expecting its raked-out steering geometry and gargantuan wheelbase to turn the Magna into a freight-train handler will be pleasantly suprised by its versatility and surefootedness. The sheer length of its wheelbase gives the VF unshakable stability at speed, and in tight spaces the Magna’s steering stays light and linear, with no tendency to flop. Heavy steering loads from fast turns will cause the front end to flex despite the Magna’s steel front fender and light-gauge brace. The Dunlop tires, impervious to freeway rain grooves, give good grip. The single-disc front brake, though somewhat high effort, is predictable and strong, hauling the VF to a stop from 60 miles per hour in a short 125 feet.. The drum rear provides even, controllable stopping power.

Previously, a jackhammer shaft reaction, intractable suspension and bucking-horse handling were all part and parcel of the power-cruiser experience, with potent engines routinely overwhelming their chassis while the poor rider hung on, white knuckled, for dear life. With the Magna we confront a chassis that feels firmly in control of the engine driving it: a motorcycle long but fairly light (the Magna weighs 530 pounds wet, only a pound heavier than last year’s VF) can strike a balance at higher levels of both stability and agility, with light steering, quick braking and a controlled shaft reaction.

The Magna offers plenty of opportunity for roomy ergonomics too, and the relationship of the Magna’s seat, footpegs and handlebar (identical to that of the old CX650 Custom) received high marks from the Cycle staff. Complaints centered around the VF’s two-piece saddle. The front section gives good support, but the seats deep contours locate the rider in a position from which he can shift around only temporarily and with difficulty.

Passengers are not so well served by the Magna’s removable rear-section seat. Positioned a full five inched higher than the pilot, the Magna’s second rider feels top-heavy, a sensation passed on full-strength to the first. With pegs high and forward due to the upswept pipes and only an over-tight grab strap for security, the Magna’s narrow, hard pillion becomes a precarious perch. Design for touring bikes has taken great strides to accommodate the passenger in comfort - sometimes at the expense of the rider - and sport bikes strike an equality of comfort (or lack thereof) for both riders. But in Magnaland, says Honda, you passenger had better have quick reflexes, provide his/her own padding and be devoted to the rider or the sport.

Stylewise, the Magna is, of course, filled with bits of greater or lesser fashion statement. The flaring pipes, with nerf bars for heels and kneecaps, draw the eye from the massive disc wheel forward to the hump of the seat. The plastic, three piece chin cowling frames the engine at its base; yellow, pink-capped plug wires punctuate the cylinder heads.

Textures invade uncommon places in the Magna - the instruments, seat covers, handgrips, master cylinders. There are clever subtleties - the welded, three-piece handlebar is Harley-thick where the eye can see, then tapers for fitment of standard-sized controls - and there are florid flourishes, particularly the VF’s louvered sidepanels, looking as if some wild flame paint scheme had imbedded itself into the bodywork. Sometimes the Magna’s interweave of textures gets cockeyed, with a gray-crinkle instrument nacelle butting straight up into the black-crinkle finish of the upper triple clamp. Regardless of the consistency of the Magna’s styling, finish is excellent throughout.

Honda’s new Magna is as much a new model with a new look as it is a telling corporate statement at a time when the lineup of street machines from the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer has shrunk to 10 models from 25 the year the Magna was first introduced. The quiet, even competence with which the Magna works testifies not only to the competence of Honda’s engineers in incorporating the demands of the Styling Department, but also to the success of the Magna’s new interpretation of power cruising. In form and function, the Magna fits Honda’s new, leaner philosophy of producing “back-to-basics, leading-edge” machines; an intriguing exercise, more stylish, more functional - and only a pittance costlier than what went before.