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-   -   Sales of 500+ cc bikes fall in 2017-18. Why? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorbikes/197161-sales-500-cc-bikes-fall-2017-18-why-2.html)

With the buying power, it made it easy to start picking these big bikes. The market has now slowed down, pretty much in each of the sectors. This makes it prominent for people who have loans to focus on them, then go for these bikes. Infrastrucutre is another reason, we just don't have the roads to enjoy these bikes. If we have to drive a superbike also at around 100-110 kmph, a 300 cc can do that day in night out, and as mentioned earlier without breaking the bank or frying your legs.

One another reason i find is the negative media coverage around these bikes. everytime an accident has happened all media house have generally blamed the bike then the rider. This makes it even tougher to convnice your family, and sows seeds of indeciseveness in the mind of the buyer himself.

Finally i think if you look at the pre owned market they are filled with superbikes, at almost half the rates of the new one, with ODOS barely touching the 10k mark. I would anyday pick one of them then going in the market to pick a new one. SAving myself money and probably use it as a seconday bike only for highway touring.

Convincing the spouse is easy. Just say "I'm 40 and I need to get either a new big bike or a 18 year old girlfriend. Choose any 1."
Not only will you be the proud owner of your dream bike but also all of your wife's friends husbands will be joining you on rides with their super bikes.

This statement is very true in the case of the Dukes too. My wife is more comfortable with me buying a bigger bike like a Harley or a Benelli. She somehow did not like the fact that I bought a "Dangerous" Duke 390.

The bike market has very little choice in the 5 to 10 lakh bracket. The Harley street 750 is not appealing at all. Ita the size of an Avenger 220. The versys is the only great buy in this price bracket with little competition, hence making the purchase difficult to convince at home and to self. The larger bikes need to adventure tourers. None of the customers who CAN buy the expensive bikes, want a sports oriented bike. We need a adventure tourer which can seat the pillion in comfort, have good relaxed riding position and be reasonable wrt price. The versys which is the only bike currently which meets that criteria (Tiger is similar but priced almost double) is very heavy for a normal Indian rider at 220 odd kgs and high seat height. I have been on the borderline for a long time and think that a Himalayan meets all my needs, but dread to imagine the RE after sales experience and continuous niggles.

If you have the money for the versys it is an absolute no brainer for high way and bad road riding, with a bit of soft offroading thrown in. 1000 kms in a day over all kinds of roads are swiftly tucked away under the odo.

Lowering kits are available abroad to bring the ride height down to 800 mm. Not expensive at all.

It is THE best purpose built adv tourer in India at the moment. I don't think any bike can challenge the versys in the near future, for overall refinement, build quality, fit and finish, price, reliability, multi purpose use and riding pleasure, all put together.

Please do refer various versys 650 ownership threads on the forum. Some very respected forum members have purchased the bike after a lot of due diligence.

All the fun and touring that can be had on our roads, for all practical purposes, can be had with a good 250cc displacement bike. There really is not much one can do with a 500cc or 1000 cc unless they take it to the tracks. They can only add prestige to the owner, not very practical to use in India.

Well gansan, a toyota corolla does everything a skoda Octavia vrs does.

So why do people here buy the Octavia vrs?

Buying a car or a motorcycle is very location, use case, and personality dependent. In most cases it is almost a bucket list item. Though i do agree with your point, but it has to be tempered with where you are located, what kind of riding you enjoy, and what is your personal use case for the bike.

This is where people do not do enough soul searching and instead just buy the flashiest, loudest, fastest on paper motorcycle money can buy.

That said, what capacity and kind of motorcycle would i choose for a 1 year on the road motorcycle ride around the country? The yet to be launched 310 gs, for the weight, perceived quality of parts, and the mostly go anywhere nature of the bike. Nothing faster or heavier.

What would i choose for trail riding in the himalayas? The yet to be launched 140 kg kerb weight Xpulse.

What would i choose for 1 week highway holidays? The versys 650.

I am someone who "upgraded" from a 2013 KTM 390 Duke to a 2017 KTM 390 Duke. So here goes my thought process.

The Ninja 650 or Z650 sounds tempting at a glance and looks like a logical upgrade. So, what do get over a second gen KTM Duke 390? More power? Yes. Better handling? Not really. Better agility? No way. More comfortable in traffic? Nope. Lower running cost? Are you kidding! Premium service? Only if waiting for a spare for 3 month sounds like it. :uncontrol

So, where does such a bike really excels? Out on the open highways. And where do I ride 90% of the time? Right inside the city. Ergo, will a bike like that be really an upgrade for me? Not really. Hence, the second gen KTM Duke 390 is what made it to my garage.

Now, how about that Made in India KTM Duke 790 when the time comes? Now, that sounds like fun wrapped in a lightweight agile chassis. :D

I guess, many people had similar thought process and the fun to vfm ratio of the KTM Duke 390 proved unbeatable.

Oh well, and there is another category of people for whom nothing of what I wrote above made any sense. For them, there is always the trusty "Bullet".

And yet another category of people are those who dreamt of a SBK right from their childhood and nothing less than a Ducati or a Triumph will do it for them, practicality be damned. But then, there are only so many of that rare breed to go around.

You are right , the 650cc motorcycle from the Japanese stable are looking quite attractive to me - just enough power without being overly dangerous ( the triumph triple requires a fair bit of expertise to ride and even then , I cannot fathom a scenario where I can ever utilize even 2/3rd of its 120bhp output ) ; the ducati scrambler and monster also have enough power (around 75bhp) for my needs plus the snob value of the ducati badge . Yesterday , I came across the Kawasaki vulcan S thread and the price at 6.5 lakh is a plus point . It is however a cruiser bike which is a genre I have little experience with so will need to take a long test ride before I take a decision .

My mom as well my lady friend think that I should get my own car instead( something like an i20 with airbags and maybe automatic as well ) , I am presently using my dad's old dzire and I suppose that is the more sensible thing to do at 28 year's age .

Hoping this spurs the manufacturers to make some sensible launches at sensible prices. Though the government is not helping much, the manufacturers arent helping the sales themselves. If you target a market segment with 10k sales a year, that is what you get in sales no matter how many launches you do. When europe, australia, US and heck even china get what specifically works for them, why cant we? Selling the R1 gets attention in India (even that god knows from whom), not sales! All this talk about India being an important market sounds humbug. All talk not much action except from a few companies. Expansion of the market is below the point in the pyramid where these guys currently are, not above. Some have realized but the process is painfully slow to change product lines. Some havent yet and its going to hurt sooner than later.

Higher capacity motorcycle sales are seeing a downward trend globally, but in the Indian context, I believe the following factors are responsible.

Aspirational value of a car compared to a motorcycle: Majority of us consider motorcycles to be a stepping stone to cars, i.e till I can afford to buy a car, let me buy a motorcycle that gets me to point A to point B for the lowest possible cost. They even refer to their motorcycles as “gaadi”. At the price point of a 500+cc motorcycle, say the popular Kawasaki Versys 650, you could get a Maruti Baleno Alpha 1.2 (give or take a few thousand rupees). So for the commuting oriented Indian rider, who incidentally makes up 95% of the motorcycle market, it's a no brainer to go for the Baleno (assuming you have a <500cc motorcycle and no car)

The Street Experience: Almost all +500cc motorcycles except adventure tourers like the Versys, Tiger etc have low ground clearance and (comparatively) harder suspensions which make riding them regularly difficult on our mostly less than perfect roads. Also, most of these motorcycles tend to generate a lot of heat in bumper to bumper traffic. They demand high level rider skill and are unforgiving of rider error. Parking these machines is a task in itself because not all the attention that the motorcycles will get will be positive.

Emergence of the 250cc-500cc segment and the used superbike scene: From sports tourers like the CBR250R, to the adventure type Himalayan and the track tools like RC390. Add to this the mad Duke 390, Ninja 300, the R3 and the recent Apache 310, it's safe to say we now have a lot of options. Not only are these easy on the pocket in terms of pricing and maintenance, their real world performance will be on par with the higher capacity counterparts in 70% of our real world riding conditions. This trade off in performance seems to be acceptable to most enthusiasts as evidenced by the sales.

As pointed out by Redliner, a lot of folks buy superbikes without giving proper thought to their riding preferences. This inevitably leads to the bike entering the used superbike market with relatively low usage and more importantly with a low price tag too. So for a enthusiast it's much more feasible to buy a used superbike that's barely done 5000km for half the price.

In conclusion, only the most passionate enthusiast will put their hard earned money towards buying a brand new >500cc motorcycle in an inconducive scenario like ours. Its a testament to their passion for motorcycles. Looks like the trend among motorcycle enthusiasts is to buy a 250cc-500cc bike that can do all that a superbike will, albiet at a slower pace and smaller rush and use the balance money to buy a better car so it keeps the family happy too.

That being said, I still cast a longing glance sprinkled with envy whenever I see a Triumph Street Triple. Riding a superbike is one of the most involving experiences one can have on an automobile. I really hope this downward trend in sales is temporary!

I believe it's due to the media hype on various 2 wheeler accidents. Needless to say, some experienced drivers have also left us. A high value purchase for emotional reasons which has the potential to kill the primary bread earner of the house is a huge turn off for any member of the family.

I guess for a lot of people, responsibilities are the main reason to say no. Can't blame em.

Primary reason is the same as why performance oriented street cars niche doesn't exist in India - road and traffic conditions not amenable to such machines.

Delving deeper, the case of performance motorcycles coming to India is three decades late compared to rest of the world.

As a result, there was no market, training system or culture here to begin with. Most brands therefore relied on lack of awareness, decent purchasing power and ego to sell their wares.

The TG predominantly was the mid life crisis crowd. This in contrast to major markets, where there are annual batches of young motorcycle school graduates who need to 'celebrate' their ' hard earned victory' of a one or two year long process to 'earn' their performance grade riding license.

Fast forward a few years to present day, the early adopter segment has been exhausted, there is no peer driven 'me too' purchase behaviour due to bad press on accidents/rash riding on public roads etc and the not so encouraging ownership experiences/after sales stories.

There are definitely no 'performance bike riding school graduates' churning out every year either. Add to that a general market slump and job uncertainties in the middle management tiers and you have present day sales numbers.

This business model is not sustainable if status quo is maintained and IMO this segment will soon go the way of performance street cars.

The Indian marketing departments, supported by 'paid media' of such brands are trying to turn the no roads problem to their sales advantage by almost hoodwinking Indian buyers to believe that tarmac oriented litre class adventure bikes were designed and meant to be operated in Leh Ladakh type of terrains aka off-road usage. I think even that is going nowhere.

I am not sure generally but this is bang on for me. I am still hanging onto my 2013 D390. Looking to upgrade I checked out the "affordable" [6-7 lakh range] bigger bikes. Performance wise none of them provide anything more than D390 at speeds lower than 100 where I do most of my riding. And being so light, D390 is much more comfortable and stress free to ride.
The street 750 (no offense to owners) I felt was actually a worse option than D390.
The only bike which came close was Street Twin. However at 9 lakhs, I don't think it is worth it.

I suppose brands such as Harley Davidson and Ducati were the brands which had driven the Big Bike sales in the previous years. I personally know a number of people who bought big Harleys because it was their child hood dream.
The heavy clutch action and heating problems from the engine means you have to have great motivation to drive these machines in traffic. This meant using these machines mostly on highways and weekend drives . As a result, the bikes spent most times in garage, much more than they were intended to.
I suppose now people have realized these issues and therefore have shifted their focus towards smaller machines such as Ninjas and Versys, which are more suited for Indian conditions.

A lot of members have spoken about practicality of larger rides and they are mostly right. You have to be very committed to ride a big bike in india apart from the social/safety disapproval from family and otber external parameters

My experience:

From the bikes that i own and ride the least i feel like taking out in the city is the bmw boxer r100r. Riding with factory fitted paniers in the city is almost impossible. So they are cling filmed and put away.

The most oft used bike is the hero impulse 150. Most practical nimble and versatile urban commuter. The only place its lacking is at highway speeds. It cant hold 80 all day long. A slight bump in cc to say 250 or 300 would solve this problem. So if i had to choose just 1 bike to ride all round it would be a 300 cc twin adventure sport. Thats why I guess I am and so many people are waiting eagerly for the launch and price of the GS310 and the KTM 390 adventure. The bike that i enjoyed riding the most was my UJM 53bhp suzuki inazuma 400/4. It was the perfect combination of power, nimble manners and glorious engaging sound of a high revving 400cc 4 cylinder bike. The honda super 4 and its like would be a great product for India and it baffles me why the Big Four dont take a stab at this bike. They all have them and still sell them in Asia

Road safety, better roads and other factors are not going to get better any time soon. So if you have to be practical and safe you need to ride defensively, on a bike that has enough power to pull you out of a sticky situation

Ride safe

R