For instance go on a long touring holiday across your beautiful country
– just think if you could do this on, say, Triumph’s new Tiger
Explorer, although any old bike would do. Or a track day... If only on
Ducati’s new Panigale!
I’m looking forward to seeing the Ducati enthusiasts ride the first
bikes here in the UK, and possibly getting a ride on one myself in the
near future, although sadly the price is a bit steep for me to afford
one...
And speaking of bike prices, over the past few years Yamaha has been
shocking UK motorcyclists with whopping big increases on the price of
its motorcycles. A Yamaha YZF-R6 suddenly cost a whopping Rs 7 lakh, the
price you’d have expected to pay for a state-of-the-art superbike.
Meanwhile its YZF-R1 ended up costing an eye-watering Rs 13 lakh, almost
on a par with Ducati’s superbikes which have always been exclusively
expensive. This move opened the floodgates and other manufacturers
followed suit, increasing their prices although never by as much as
Yamaha which priced its latest V-Max at a staggering Rs 15.57 lakh.
What gave the Japanese superbikes their popularity was their awesome
performance at such affordable prices. Suddenly they had become
expensive, out of the reach of many motorcyclists. Yamaha was quick to
point out that in the past 10 years prices had barely gone up, plus the
latest superbikes were so packed with technology it was no longer
possible for manufacturers to keep prices so low.
So you can imagine how excited I was to receive an email last month
with “Yamaha perform price surgery” in the subject box. It went on to
read: “Great news for customers that thought that some Yamahas were out
of reach! Recognising the competitive nature of the market place, the
Japanese brand have today, announced a price review on some key models.
‘’Yamaha continue to look at offering the best value for our customers,
striving to give not only our customers the best product but continuing
to produce exciting motorcycles and scooters of the highest quality for
our customers to enjoy well into the future.’’ Reading between the
lines, it’s clear the sudden hike in prices had damaged Yamaha sales,
leading the manufacturer to announce a reduction in the price of some of
its models for 2012.
I’d be very peeved if I’d paid last year’s price for my Yamaha! However
looking at the new prices, an R6 has barely gone down at all, while the
R1 has had around Rs 40,000 slashed off its RRP, to a more competitive
Rs 9.34 lakh. Still, in the words of Britain’s supermarket giant Tesco
which according to news reports will be opening branches in India soon -
Every little helps!
One manufacturer however that continues to buck the trend by seeing a
massive increase in sales is British manufacturer Triumph. I know I keep
bringing this up, but new figures show profits nearly doubled in 2011,
with the manufacturer from Hinckley increasing its global sales by seven
percent to 48,684. Earnings before interest and tax rose from £15.1m to
£22.3m in the 12 months to the end of June. The group, chaired by
former trade minister Lord Digby Jones, has managed to sidestep the
slump in consumer confidence that has hit motorcycle sales particularly
hard.
The global market for powerful motorcycles has halved since its zenith
in 2007 after shrinking by seven per cent last year. Triumph warned that
it remained ‘cautious’ over its prospects for 2012 due to the ‘global
economic turmoil’, but said it was reaping the benefit after ploughing
more cash into research and development, the result of which has brought
us some brilliant new models, including 2012’s Tiger Explorer that’s
set to give BMW’s so far untouchable R1200GS a seriously hard time.
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