Thanks, guys...yeah, it is a cool bike. I got to ride it as a solo last year, shortly after she got it. Took it out for an hour and a half, actually, and rode it all over the place. It was interesting.
If you've never ridden one, it's got a fluid torque converter like a car, no clutch control, and a Neutral-Low-Drive foot shift. You have to shift it with your foot from one ratio to the other, unlike a car, but it can easily get up to 45-50 in low and once it's warm it seems pretty comfortable taking off from a dead stop in Drive. I thought it felt best to take off in Low, shifting up somewhere in the 25-35 mph range, depending on how much I wanted to accelerate vs. take it easy.
The round thing you'd expect to be a tach housing is actually pretty much a blank-faced thing with a couple idiot lights in it...N, L, D and I think oil temperature or oil pressure or something. You'd have to try pretty hard to over-rev this thing. I would guess when I felt the top of the powerband approaching and shifted up I was probably no higher than 7500-8000 (this is last year, riding it solo, not out in the pasture with the sidecar!) and I seem to remember the normal 750F redlining at 9500 and pulling up into that range pretty eagerly.
Highly enthusiastic specifications research after that ride informed me that the automatic 750s were detuned quite a bit, presumably to broaden the torque curve for the two gears. Lower compression and quite a bit smaller carbs. It's been several years, at least, since I've ridden a normal CB750F, but it would be interesting to compare the two back-to-back.
It's not that I mind shifting/clutching, but I really thought the 750A was a pleasant all-around ride. All I could really complain about with it was that the forks and shocks seemed kind of tired and boingy at any kind of spirited cornering attempt. Can't really bitch about that on a bike that old. The seals don't leak and the bike is pretty cherry and the lady who rides it is quite a bit lighter than me, so for her it might not be an issue anyway.