You may not spend a lot of time thinking about it, but design (both good and bad) affects you directly, every single day. That poorly designed juice jug that just dribbled all over your new top and made you yell? A design choice. That smartphone you might be reading this on, and how it fits (or doesn’t) in your hand? More design choices.
That’s why an OEM like Honda is keen to celebrate when it gets design recognition, such as scooping up four separate 2023 Red Dot Design Awards. Since 2020, Honda has won Red Dot product design awards every single year for some of its newest models—and in 2023, two of those prestigious design awards went to new bikes.
Without further ado, Honda’s four 2023 Red Dot Design Award winners are:
| Vehicle | Red Dot Design Award Category |
| XL750 Transalp (European Version) | Motorcycle Design |
| CB750 Hornet (exclusive model sold outside Japan) | Motorcycle Design |
| Civic e:HEV (European Version) | Car Design |
| Civic Type R (European Version) | Car Design |
For those unfamiliar, the international Red Dot Design Award was founded in 1955 and is administered by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen each year. While rules and criteria may have changed slightly over time, as of 2023, the Product Design awards feature 51 different categories of industrial products. All of these are judged by an expert panel of judges, across nine different criteria including innovation, functionality, durability, and ergonomics.
“This year, Honda is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its founding. We are very pleased to win the Red Dot Design Award: Product Design in both motorcycle and automobile designs. We believe that we have been able to win this world-class design award for four years in a row because Honda’s “people-centric” approach to Monozukuri (art of making things) has been well conveyed to our customers and society directly through our products. Honda will continue to carry on this approach and passion and keep surprising and inspiring people with our design,” Honda R&D chief design officer and managing director Toshinobu Minami said in a statement.
So, if you’re looking forward to getting your hands on either a CB750 Hornet or an XL750 Transalp, you can see how your opinions of its design stack up against the Red Dot jury’s. For those of us in the US, though, we’ll have to wait—as neither of these models has yet been announced for our market at the time of writing.
