When it comes to making motorcycles one has to ask the question "Does Honda have an identity crisis?". Honda is not alone in using the lessons learnt on the racetrack to "improve" the breed by feeding that technology into it's road bikes. Now that was all well and good when everybody was hell bent on riding race replicas on the road, but the market for pure sports bikes has shrunk by 21% and 26% respectively over the previous 2 years. And that is massive with equally massive implications for Honda in terms of both sales and revenue from the UK and Europe.
It doesn't take much looking at the manufacturers who are doing well in the current climate to see that the growth in sales in in the smaller capacity machines and those with a naked / adventure design bias. This is an area where Honda should be doing well, after all, it got there first with the Africa Twin, Dominator and Transalp, but where BMW, KTM and others persevered and made sales grow, Honda just gave up as soon as it was obvious that sales growth and consumer take-up was going to be slow. It has chased the Holy Grail that is Moto GP lead pure sports bikes to a point where it now finds that it has to re-invent the bread and butter type of motorbike that is needed to bring in the sales required to support the organisation as it currently exists.
It was Honda that brought us the Cub, the utility step-through machine that is the backbone of transport systems across much of the world today outside of Europe and America. The problem is that now those machines are mostly produced by Chinese companies that have blatantly copied Honda's long forgotten designs and few of those companies are paying anything into Honda's corporate wallet/bank account. This has forced Honda to explore new designs to place into the growth markets and to kill off old designs. The V-twins used in the Deauville and Transalp have been supplanted by the New Concept parallel twins and the old 500cc parallel twins have had to have a complete revamp to bring them up-to-date. The DN-01 died a premature death, only to be resurected as the CTX (America only) models. Honda has had to call on the car division to show them how to produce motorcycle engines because cars do not use engines that rev to 13 or 14 thousand rpm - 8,000 rpm is about tops for most petrol driven cars and 4,500 for the diesel versions.
So this year we have the new/revised CB500 range of motorbikes following last year's introduction of the NC700 based machines. They are all good looking motorbikes, especially when compared to the previously very dull but worthy offerings that Honda has offered for the last 15 years while it focused on the sports and sports tourers (old/has been sports bikes blinged up with a bit of touring kit). At last Honda have realised that they need to offer value for money machines that are attractive and easy to ride, bikes that will appeal to the older rider and newbie first time rider, the commuter and the person looking for an alternative to a car without having the expense of a small car to buy a simple motorbike. But have they done it soon enough? Is it a coincidence that of the motorcycle dealers that have ceased trading there is a good number of Honda (only/solus) dealers?
So, is it an identity crisis or a simple lack of patience, a lack of perseverance? Having started the switch back to producing models that need to sell in larger numbers to bring in the revenue does Honda have the will to stick at it? My view is that it has to simply because Honda gave the motorcycle the 'white goods' tag and was the first motorcycle manufacturer to do so, and I believe that quite simply, that is still the Honda ethos. Build in volume, sell in volume. The Deauville and Transalp used to sell about 9,000 units annually and Honda has switched their production off because those were insignificant numbers in the greater scheme of things, but those are production run numbers that Moto Guzzi and a few other European makers would die for! Now is a very interesting time in motorcycling, especially if your name is Honda.
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