Tag

asia

Browsing

Sometimes, you need to put something into the universe to see it happen, and it was just two days ago that we were speculating on rumors about Harley-Davidson’s plans for a small-displacement machine, likely headed for the Asian markets.

Today, we get confirmation of that news hearing that the Bar & Shield brand will collaborate with the Qianjiang Motorcycle Company to build small-displacement motorcycles targeted at China and the rest of the Asian continent.

The bike will be 338cc in displacement, and be released first in China, with the other Asian markets to follow.

It can be hard to get excited about a new scooter design for the 2018 model year, especially when so many other crazy machines are being unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show today (new Honda Gold Wing, Yamaha’s three-wheeled motorcycle of awesome, and the Kawasaki Ninja 400…just to name a few), but give us a minute here.

One of the less-publicized releases from Big Red caught our attention today, two scooters in fact: the Honda PCX Electric and the Honda PCX Hybrid. As the names suggest, both machines are built off the same basic concept, though they differ in their drivetrain.

I'm not sure that the news of Triumph partnering with Bajaj quite made the impact on the motorcycle industry that it deserves.

Maybe it is because we have seen Triumph misstep with smaller displacement machines in the past (with an Indian partner, no less), or perhaps it is because the press release penned by Triumph CEO Nick Bloor was utterly incomprehensible, and devoid of any concrete facts.

Either way, the news is worth spilling some more pixels over, because there is a bit at stake in the coming years for the motorcycle OEMs, and Triumph just made a bid for sizable land grab for it.

To continue reading this story, you need to have an A&R Pro subscriber account. If you have an A&R Pro account, you can login here.

An Asphalt & Rubber reader sent me link recently, outlining how President Trump's pullout from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would adversely affect international sales for Harley-Davidson.

At first I was just going to post a quick synopsis and send you all to read it for yourselves, if you wanted to dive deeper into the meat of the story. But then, I did some digging of my own.

The story, done by Forbes, doesn't connect the dots too well. And while I agree with the author's ultimate point, the reasoning he uses to get there is fairly flawed.

His argument boils down to the fact that the TPP would lower import costs for brands doing business in Asia, and since Harley-Davidson sells 40% of its bikes in the Asian market, it would therefore benefit from the USA becoming a TPP signatory.

The issue of course isn't as cut-and-dry, and requires a bit of digging into what markets would become more favorable for Harley-Davidson, and where the future of the Bar & Shield brand resides. Buckle-up, because here we go.

To continue reading this story, you need to have an A&R Pro subscriber account. If you have an A&R Pro account, you can login here.

Suzuki has finally gotten into the quarter-liter sport bike game, debuting the 2017 Suzuki GSX-250R in China this month. Before you get too excited, you should know that the GSX-250R is really just the Suzuki Inazuma in new clothing.

This means that the twin-cylinder six-speed street bike makes 25hp, 17 lbs•ft of torque, and weighs 392 lbs at the curb.

Not exactly mind-blowing stats, but Suzuki’s goal with the GSX-250R is to build a more practical and affordable machine, rather than a race bike as seen with the KTM RC390 and Honda CBR250RR. To that end, we’d say they accomplished that goal.

The Honda CBR250RR is getting closer to breaking cover, with a teaser video of the quarter-liter sport bike coming to us this week from Honda’s Indonesian importer.

The video doesn’t give away too much on its face, but it does confirm the “RR” status of the new bike, and shows that many of the details that we have seen already on the Honda “Light Weight Super Sport” concept have made it into the production machine.

This bodes well for small-displacement motorcycle fans, with the upcoming Honda CBR250RR likely being the bike that many hoped Honda had initially produced, instead of the Honda CBR250R and Honda CBR300R combo.

The idea of a motorcycle taxi sounds like a novelty in the Western World, but in Southeast Asia they are an effective and affordable way to cut through the massive traffic jams that occur in these developing countries.

It is only logical then that we see disruptive services appearing in this already lucrative space, so enter into the scheme UberMOTO.

The concept is as simple as the name, UberMOTO is just like Uber’s citizen-based taxi cab system, which allows you to hail a cab from the comfort of your smartphone, except instead of cars, it utilizing motorcycles.

Benelli motorcycles will finally be coming back to the American market, with SSR Motorsports taking on the importation and distribution duties for China’s Qinjiang Group – the owner of the Benelli motorcycle brand.

Benelli’s debut model in the USA seems set to be the Benelli TnT25, which looks suspiciously like the Benelli BN251 that we showed you back in November of last year.

If that’s the case, then it will be stark contrast to the Benelli we have been used to seeing in the US, namely an Italian brand that invokes all aspects of the Italian motorcycle heritage: utterly beautiful machines that are also notoriously unreliable.

Sunday at Sepang provided a fascinating mix for motorcycle racing fans. A blistering Moto3 race, an impressive, if shortened, Moto2 race, and some breathtaking action in MotoGP. History was made several times over, and best of all, the races took place in front of a sellout crowd. Over 80,000 fans packed the stands in Malaysia, proof, if any were needed, of the slow, eastward drift of motorcycle racing’s center of gravity.

In the MotoGP race, Dani Pedrosa did what he had set out to do two weeks earlier at Aragon, before he was so rudely ejected from his bike. Pedrosa had a look of grim determination on his face from the moment he rolled up at Sepang, and it barely left him all weekend. He had come to do a job, the pain in his hips merely spurring him on to get what he had been robbed of by an overeager teammate and an exposed sensor.

Record months, quarters, and years are becoming an old hat for BMW Motorrad, and last month continues the trend for the German brand. Selling 14,587 motorcycles in April 2013, BMW Motorrad says that it saw an 11.5% sales increase over April 2012.

The primary contributor for that sales boost is the 2013 BMW R1200GS, which has been completely redesigned from its venerable predecessor, and now includes “strategic” liquid-cooling for the cylinder heads, and a bevy of other enhancements (A&R will be swinging a leg over one shortly).