Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Big Bikes in Pakistan

Suzuki atunned the bike lovers last year with their launch of GW250 Inazuma, M800 Intruder and GSXR1300 Hayabusa in Pakistan. Honda followed suit and introduced CBR150 and CBR500 both twin cylinder bikes. The 2014 marks the arrival of Aprilia in Pakistan as they introduce RS4 125 and Shiver 750, which are trult Italian bikes. What has been sheer disappoitment to the bike lovers are the sky high pricesof all these bikes, consider Honda's CBR150 for Rs.660,000-, Inazuma for Rs.700,000- and more surprisingly Aprilia's RS4 125 for a massive Rs.985,000-. No doubt, these imported machines are costly and thanks to higher import duties couppled with weak currency value the total cost goes high but still the price tag put on all these bikes makes no sense and it appears that the these bikes have not been intruduced with the aim of selling them rather it is a projection stunt to show the company's presence in the country, I mean who would buy a 125cc bike for roughly 1 million rupees when he can easily find a used R1 in similar price, which is a more famous and obviously more powerful race bike; 125cc versus 1000cc no comparison at all. Only time will tell how many units of these smaller displacement bikes are sold in Pakistan. In my view, it is a failed experiment.