In case you didn't get to ogle the three or four honestly "new" motorcycles in this year's Progressive International Motorcycle Show, here's what I thought was cool, silly, entertaining, overpriced, hilarious, beautiful, gaudy, and/or interesting. Sorry it took me a week to get around to downloading the pictures.
My favorite bike of the show was the new Honda CB500X and the CBR500 came in an interesting 2nd. I was, obviously, sort of amazed that Yamaha brought a 2008 WR250R to the show. From what I've heard, they can't give 'em away and are still trying to unload five year old inventory. Great bike, no market for a practical urban dual purpose bike. Now that I write that, it sort of seems insane. The CB500-series is intended to be a collection of 70+mpg fuel misers with similar performance characteristics to last year's brilliant NC700 bikes. Honda claims this is "going back to our roots." I desperately hope this isn't too little, too late.
Otherwise, I didn't see a lot of interesting stuff at the show. I tried to get the magazine's "money's worth," but it was hard to find a couple hours worth of stuff to look at. Maybe I'm just old and jaded.
2 comments:
When we went to the show in Seattle, Honda had one of the busiest booths outside of Triumph and perhaps Ducati. It was so busy it was hard to get near the new 500's. They had one of each of them and one 700.
I think there is definitely a market for the bikes for new riders and commuters, let's hope the public doesn't disappoint and actually buys them.
A lot of us are talking about the "new" market. Early expectations for the NC700X were pretty low. A lot of reviewers panned the bike hard and didn't get the purpose. Buyers, however, cleaned out Honda's inventory be early fall. From what I heard, it was a big seller for Honda; and absolute hit. If the market has any grip on reality at all, I'd expect the 500's (especially the X) to do just as well. Nobody ever got rich on my expectations, though.
Post a Comment