And i will be going in for CBR beating you badly.....

I don't mind at all; I'm an Indian, who's already beaten everyday by law, justice, traffic, civic sense, roads & all the more tax man!!! A little on the road doesn't matter to me hehe

Dont you feel you ruined this post with a stale 2 yr old joke ??

i like the discussion in last two pages....after a really long time we had a fruitful, and to the point discussion without too much bashing and personal attacks.

Good.and Guys, indian companies have grown tremendously from say..bajaj CT100, hero honda CD100, and TVS mopeds, look at them now, bajaj having equal share in KTM and even producing KTM bikes which are used and sold world over with "made in india" tag, pulsar 220 & P200NS, look at TVS Apache series, even hero partnering with Eric.. etc and producing some nice bikes and ruling india market for so long....today indian companies have started giving compition to japs all over the world. and not to forget india, in india it is "hunto" japs have to compete with us, and not vice versa.

all this make me feel good.but why Honda bikes have a reputation, because they built that reputation over years, not in a day, and most importantly look at the honda bikes, they have full understanding of market and always launch the products according to it, a classic case is CBR250, cheapest 250CC available in india with things like ABS, and well rounded package, well, it may not be able to compete with Ninja250 or R15 on a track, but how many buy it for riding on race track only..?? so, its the package deal they give, that sells their products- quality, price, features etc- jack of all trades, but master of none and mind you most successful road going bikes require only these qualities.

as far as i am concerned, i am going to buy CBR250, probably in jan 2013, unless there is a solid P375 coming with full fairing, projector headlamps, more power than CBR250, and with better handling and ABS. what ultimately matters is - product packaging and positioning in market.

Wait for Hero 250cc Bike...it may be more powerful then CBR

If it's a 250 cc then it will still remain under powered compared to the KTM/Bajaj 375 cc

1) If there was no mango tree, who would sell mangos and from where? OFcourse you can sell other fruits from their respective trees.
2) Nobody asked Munjal to sign an agreement with such suicidal stipulations. It is only common sense to ditch and find another partner. But they didnt do it, Did they? And Guess why? Because Honda was Hero's only hope at that time of making it BIG in the market.

Here's an important question i putforth to you: Before the Hero-Honda JV, what was Hero manufacturing?
And do you think they wouldve made it as the world's largest manufacturer and be the epitome of reliable motorcycles all on their own?

Btw "Showa" is a japanese company and Not "Italian" supplying shocks to Ducati.
Company Overview?|?SHOWA CORPORATION

As for the chassis building and everything else, Hero is only building it as per orders from
About UsZF Friedrichshafen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So you see, Hero heavily relied on Japanese and European partners (But majorly Japanese) at the time and hence sought Honda's help to move from bicycle manufacturing to Motorcycle manufacturing. Do you think Splendor wouldve lasted more than a decade without Honda?

Hero is just a manufacturing vendor to the big companies listed on their sites. They do not provide R&D for those companies.

Just to let you know, There is a suspension vendor in India(a not so famous entity and i think he's based in Lucknow) who supplied suspension components manufactured in India to Aston Martin for their limited edition One-77. Does that make him any significant? Nope. They gave the orders, he manufactured and that's it. Now AM is a part of his companies customer list. Does that mean anything significant? Nope. Vendors are just that.. Vendors.

Nobody doubts Hero's manufacturing capabilities. They have been doing it from the 50's iirc.
If anything Hero shouldve terminated the contract a long time ago, but they didnt.

Again EBR as far as i know manufactures track bikes and not road legal bikes in the 1000cc category. How much would they evaluate the Indian road conditions and the requirements of Indians is unknown. And track bikes undergo overhauling every 3-4 sessions, thus reliability will be a major factor for a thoroughbred trackbike manufacturer.
Besides EBR was founded about 3 years ago. 2013 is too early for two new R&D teams to develop a motorbike for the Indian market. It takes atleast 3 years for a concept to evolve into a production model.

Doesnt hating on "International brand" fanboys indirectly make them a "Local brand" fanboy? And does not the above quoted line hold true for them aswell?
Food for thought
No offence to any fanboys irrespective of the geography


And i seriously have no idea why people consider a "discussion" as "Bashing" or "Brand war". Seriously, what is the main purpose of an online forum? Is it not discussion? I do understand sometime the sarcasm seems misplaced but that is no reason to delete posts citing "Unnecessary" as a reason.

Dictionary says: Forum:

1. A meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

More power on P375 is a given, already 200NS makes 23ps just 2 short of CBR250. I would be surprised if P375 makes anything less than 35ps, I think it will be around 40ps+/-2. Just curious, if Bajaj comes with a P250 and with same specs as that of CBR250, which one would you buy then

On Hero's 250cc bike, I got a feeling that they are trying to do too many things at a time. Just wish luck & success for them. I don't want an Indian company go bad right after the split with Honda.

You think the other way and i think the other way. Thanks, for pointing out that SHOWA is Japanese as i got confused with italian company.
Why don't you think the other way. Indian companies are going global. Why did all those companies tie-up with Hero to manufacture components. There are thousands of companies, why did they not tie up. And in my post i have no where mentioned that hero is doing R&D. I have clearly mentioned that they are a manufacturing hub and still there are many companies which have yet to match the quality of hero.
And regarding Hero tie up with Honda. It was not that only Hero had the requirement of tie up. Honda had also the requirement. A merger cannot work unless both the parties are in need of each other. And why did honda tie-up with a bicycle manufacturer when there were lots of other companies in the 80's.
Honda wanted to enter Indian market and also wanted a company which has excellent manufacturing prowess. That is the reason they tied-up with hero. A JV cannot work unless both partners were in need of each other.
And regarding the suspension components to Aston martin, yes it matters. Because an Aston martin is not only famous for its status symbol but also for its performance and handling. And suspension is an important component. If the small company could supply components to Aston martin then it is his credit as it could manufacture quality components that aston wanted. Aston is a company which will take no compromise with quality.And this company not only provided quality but also maintained the quality over all the units manufactured. It is about time when we must give credits to indian companies for maintaining the international standards and also they are going global. It is a matter of pride that foreign companies are looking for indian companies to manufacture there components while there are many global companies.

Splendor is not popular because it has good technology as there are more better technology than it. In fact it is the most technologically simple bikes around. Honda only gave the blue prints to HERO. It was hero who manufactured, marketed and supported splendor. The trust that splendor created was because hero maintained the quality among competition. While i agree it was Honda technology but technology is not everything. I do not know about you but as i am a mechanical engg. i know how difficult it is to bring out a product from its blue print. And inspite of such large scale production maintaining quality is another most difficult thing.

And hero not separating from Honda, now it has separated from Honda. Lets wait and watch what they do. And why would it separate when they were most successful. Even why did not honda separate. It is just that they saw that they were in need of each other. As soon as they saw that they were not in need of each other they separated.

This thread is about discussing about the new Hero 250 cc bike. Even before launch and prototype, here some says that hero cannot produce a 250 cc bike and some say it will do sticker upgrade e.t.c. Even before a company launches a product who are we to tell bad things about it. Lets see what hero launches. Without even seeing some her comments about the bike which is not a good thing to do.

And second thing is that it is about time we give Indian companies credit as we always think that Indian companies are using foreign technology, but why do not we think that indian companies have so much evolved that companies all over the world are now eager to tie-up and make India a manufacturing hub. The thing is that we always look that it is a foreign item means it is good. But have we ever thought that the product that is foreign has most of the components from Indian companies. This is what i wanted to say in that post. You are riding a bike. Unless and until each component work perfectly then you cannot say my bike is perfect. When most of the components are manufactured by Indian company we must be proud that the quality that they maintain makes our bike a pleasure to ride.

And regarding having never produce a road bike, then they are not licensing the technology, but hero engineers are working with EBR engineers to produce a bike. EBR will gain from hero manufacturing knowledge and quality and hero will gain from EBR's technological knowledge.And un like Hero honda where honda had the license, in this JV all the products will be the license of Hero.

Lets look and see what our Indian companies are doing.We being knowledgeable about bikes we must see what products Indian companies are bringing out.Simple, even before the bike is out if we say that oh! it is an Indian product, so it has to be not good then we become same to those 99% of people who do not have any automobile knowledge and freely give knowledge to others. They are those people who thinks every thing having imported stamp is good and indian products are not good.Since we are a member of a large biking community we must always be open to new ideas.

If it was a sarcastic comment then it is okay as i posted not in any malice intension but as an discussion to let know that how far Indian companies have come.The thing is that bajaj,hero and TVS all are now going to compete globally and we must applaud them. If we being there home do not think them good and instead see to foreign companies, then how would we develop. And i am not an anti foreign companies guy but in fact i love HONDA CBR 250 and YAMAHA R15 among present bikes. Its just that i want indian companies to bring bikes to compete with them.

Don't be too happy ... I watched in BikeIndia Dec issue Mag that HONDA CBR 500R is about to come in India Typical Honda Refinement with Superb looks & Power..

Well, by the same logic then the 250 cc Hero would be under powered compared to the 500 cc Honda.

I don't agree on the "Looks" part though.

Man, this thread is going hilarious. Some are comparing 250 cc to 375 and some are to 500. Come on all these are different categories and how can they overlap.Similarly i can say they are underpowered to 650. Man they have different customers. A 250 will be cheaper than 375 and 375 will be cheaper than 500. Also fuel efficiency will similarly vary.Not all people want more power. For some 250cc is perfect balance of power and mileage. So its not that which is bigger it is that which is perfect to our needs.

And the new CB 500R is not good looking. But the new naked CB 500 is quite good to look at.And i absolutely love the looks of CB 1100.

OMG!

way too much Hondas and Bajajs.

The sheer lack of respect towards Hero, asked me to discuss some of the reasons and happenings. But that doesn't mean that I don't have respect for foreign bikes. Those who are close to me knows how much I am interested in some japanese bikes. But that doesn't makes me an Indian bike basher for unnecessary reason.

Lets come back to the core discussion here:

This is best time for a 250 single , an over square one please. And let it make 30 HP. Hero can sell it not only here but internationally as well. With modern tech and already existing trust it is very feasible.Not many are making affordable 250s today. Bajaj, KTM, Kawasaki trio are not playing in that bracket. Yamaha is not doing anything until 2015. So heroes 250 makes sense. We need more than one on that class to get better improvements by competitors as well.

If they are launching it by late 2013 or early 2014 they will have a winner in hand.
Provided:

They also make a new frame, new suspension bits etc. I don't have much doubt on quality any way.

Hope they wont replace ZMA's CRF230 Power house with erik bull engines

I hope they just dont launch a single 250cc bike... a tourer(adventure bike), cruiser, sports, cafe-racer and a naked... it will help them make up for being late to the market