Honda Dream Neo(= Retro??): Still more expensive than
Hero HF Dawn
Hero HF Deluxe
Hero Splendor+
Hero Splendor NXG
Bajaj Discover 100


P.S.: All Hero bikes now come with a 5 year / 70k km warranty which the Hondas don't.

Dono when will the common man stops treating this Honda as god...god look at their confidence..
That to with this same old design
Sent From My Google Phone

Did Hero 'Honda' have an option back then ? Aren't they were they were/are because of 'Honda's' tech/engines ? If you are calling it 'beating' then buddy, that 'beating' is what made money for Hero Honda!!
Looking at it from a straight forward perspective (no offence pure business), Hero 'honda' was/is the best selling motorcycle brand because of the honda engines/tech. Now that the 'Honda' tag is gone (and soon will the 'honda' based engines) we can clearly see the sales figures drop.
In India VOLUMES matter, and not selling a few premium, higher capacity (read 150+cc)/technologically advanced bikes at higher price.

And talking about 5yrs/70k km warranty, i seriously doubt its 'feasibility'... imagine buying a karizma now (never mind the color) and 5 yrs down the line do you think all the spares will be available easily ? I am skeptical though. And often, not more than 20% of the bikes (except maybe higher end bikes like the ninja/cbr etc..) go to a ASC for more than 2yrs (at the max) for regular servicing. So Hero is playing its cards safely ! And other manufacturers too provide extended warranty i.e. 2+3yrs for under 1000rs (and most of the time it is 'forced' upon the customer during the purchase and some customers are not even aware of it). So..

If it is the same as looking in above picture, then what is the difference between dream yuga and this one....What honda is doing.

Nice shocks by Honda this year. . . Hope they give us a shock soon by introducing the CBR 400 or 500 series in India as soon as possible and give us the biggest shock of all. . .

So Honda decides another release in the econo-commuter category. 110cc, 8 and a half horses and promising three quarters of the magic 100 kms to a liter figure. Why? Because they are here to do business and not earn brownie points from a handful of 'we want more cc - more power' gang. According to their market research, more than 60% of two-wheeler sales lie in the 100-110cc category and the sales are mostly defined by initial cost, mileage, brand (which implies reliability and good post-sales experience) and utility. Looks and performance almost come as an afterthought as satisfying the 4 afore-stated conditions usually takes the wind out of looks and performance anyways. Feeding these last two in any case leads to an unacceptable increase in the first of the former 4 conditions - the initial cost.

This particular segment in India is akin to the endless pit. Keep dropping models into it and it doesn't seem to fill up even one bit. The potential sales volumes are so massive that even a small percentage of them is enough to make the company cash registers ring loud and melodious. With good low-end torque @ a low 5500 rpm (perceived by the target market as good 'pick-up) and high ground clearance this bike is targetted as much at the urban commuter as it is for the semi-urban and rural buyer. Spreading the target market when allied with an expanding sales and service network will help Honda sell it well. There will be cannibalistic sales vis a vis the Dream yuga as even Mr. Guleria admitted during the question/answer session but also as he said that it doesn't matter much since Honda is happy when it is Honda that's selling. Hero in any case has been at it since donkey's years and earned its bread and butter on this very strategy.

I see lots of comments that 'ridicule' any small capacity motorcycle launch. Such ridiculing usually fails to get in touch with the base engineering and market realities of the product and focus only upon the smallness, the ordinariness and the 'punyness' (to coin a new word here) of the product. There's an almost childish wish lurking behind it all that wants every new bike to be high-power/high-performance. Low volume sales will ever be a deterrent when it comes to performance bikes. But all said and done, things are changing for the better despite the feeling that all we are getting are weaklings on wheels by the supposed strongmen of the industry. The product portfolio expands to exploit market demand. Rarely is it the other way round when we see an addition to the product range meant to trigger demand. Such courage is left for bungee jumping or crocodile hunting There's nothing more real than money and every corporation planning to be around and grow has its finger stuck on that fact. They might 'sell' a dream but that selling is just to make sure they sleep well themselves. So do make space in your 'passionate' hearts for puny motorcycles not for the cause of the corporations but because your less financially endowed or more utilitarian brethren also need a set of good wheels with an engine in between to ride around on.

The Dream Neo is of course another bike in a crowd. What it does to the sales charts is pure conjecture as of now. And even though it seems retrograde in a major safety aspect like brakes which happen to be small drums across the range without even an option of a disc up front, the rest of the engineering seems sound enough and should stand well to typical commuter use. The low initial price, the Honda assurance and the high claimed mileage are the more apparent 'selling points' here. Have deleted the 'unique' from USP as there's almost zilch possibility of being truly unique in this over-populated category while remaining within the low initial cost constraints. So in a nutshell the Dream Neo is another entry in a crowded class. Not great but not bad either. And in a class where function rules over form, being there at times is more than enough. One request to Honda though - please give us at least one performance bike for every 3 'Dreams'. Please! All right make it 4 Dreams if you want to but don't skew the ratios any further!! After all brownie points could be the seed for sales points someday huh? Goodwill IS afterall a vital organ in the physiology of a brand.

I don't wanna start a brand war here...i have bikes of both the companies at my home...
But just a last response i am giving to the topic is:-
Honda came into existence in India just because Hero Motocorp have partnership with them...
The baby is able to walk only if the first step is secured by their parents...

It was just my opinion and please guys don't start brand war here as all the brands have some or the other advantages as well as disadvantages...

Photo: Sunil Gupta and Sandeep Goswami

Oooo... 140 kmph top speed!

Wish Honda all the success they need. We need bigger bikes too!

Nice Stuff..from Honda, but 100cc >= na..... also other 100-110cc --125cc--135cc from bajaj- Hero- Tvs na... no all these bikes same engine only Name & Graphics Change

I Love My LORD

@Old Fox: brilliant post, as usual! Profound and well-articulated, your posts are always a joy to read!

Is Neo the "One"? The "One" that will beat Hero MotoCorp's Splendor? Any Matrix fans here? Jokes apart, I am finding these differences that actually matter, compared to Dream Yuga:-

1. Wheelbase is 1258mm instead of 1285mm. It translates to: quicker turns within the city, but less stability at high speeds,
2. Lesser maximum torque by a small margin, and more mileage. Honda must have made minor changes to carb/ engine.


Today in 100-112cc range, we have a total of 5 variants from Bajaj, 12 from Hero MotoCorp, 5+1 from Honda, 1 from Mahindra, 1 from Suzuki, 3 from TVS, 2 from Yamaha, etc. That makes a total of mindblowing 30 different variants of pure commuter motorcycles. And, scooters, 125cc bikes & different colors are not included in this list.

And we have only Two 200cc bikes, Four 250cc bikes, Three 650cc bikes, etc. We obviously will want something we don't have, right? The only 2 existing Honda's I "might" ever want to get in my life are CBR 500R or CBR 600F (in increasing order of preference, CBR600F being the best).

Yes Samarth, Honda has made some major changes to the engine internals and they had that on display at the launch venue. Check out the pictures below.





The Dream Neo piston has a pronounced 'squish' zone and a corresponding change in the head vis a vis the 'conventional' head and piston. The enlarged squish zone has increased the compression ratio too, both together leading to better fuel combustion efficiency and thus better economy. The Dream Neo piston is also slightly lighter leading to somewhat lowered dynamic losses. Also lean burn engines as are the norm now for higher sustained fuel economy need precise metallurgy for acceptable engine life and consistent performance. In short the visible changes are not a true measure of the engineering work that might have gone into developing this engine.

In engines as small as this achieving even slight gains is a big fight and needs thorough and persistent pursuit of the targeted results. And Honda as an organisation that lays as much stress on disciplined work as on technical excellence has loads of gumption to keep squeezing more and more from less and less.

Still can't match the Styling of Passion X pro

Even if it looks just like DY its going to sell good because its a HONDA and the icing on the cake is its affordable price. So people will go bonkers saying HONDA product with an affordable price is always a steal.

If the same product was launched by Indian companies then we could have written off on the day of launch only. Thats the power of Brand. Rajeev Bajaj has realised this long back and thats the reason they invested in KTM which is a good brand which will improve their premium products and for lower products they go with differentiated product offerings. TVS is late to realise this and they recently tied up with BMW. Lets see how well it works for them.