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JMU R1 wrote:
CB77 wrote:

Makes me think of a post I made last fall, about the decline of the U.S. M/C market, and how Honda is/may react to it:

"The U.S. only accounts for a pitiful 1.7% of the M/C business. It makes you wonder why Honda doesn't say "the hell with the U.S. M/C market...we would rather sell thousands of step-thru 50's in Asia, with no warranty or product liability headaches, than keep pouring money down a rathole in the U.S. market." Honda's M/C division in the U.S. has not been profitable since 1992.

I think there is a parallel in Honda's auto business. Each new model year, customers all expect the new models to have more horsepower, more features, better handling and braking, and cost no more. As Honda has tried to meet these requirements, the Civic and Accord have gained size and weight and expense...and become less fun to drive, sort of like our M/C lineup. Yet you can see what happens when Honda tries to violate these rules: the 9G Civic.

Regarding Honda's car business, it may just be that Honda's forte is, and always has been, building small, lightweight, fuel efficient, good handling cars with small, high-revving 4-cyl engines. And the further away from that formula that Honda moves, the less their offerings are liked, at least by the original Honda enthusiasts.

If the market would have accepted for Honda to still be selling the 1973 Civic and the 1976 Accord (like VW did for 30 years with the original Beetle)...Honda would probably be a lot happier with their lot. But, as the market moved on, Honda tried (not always successfully) to move on with it, with their product line."

I think all of the Japanese manufacturers built their fortunes on a house of cars in the United States. For starters, I'm sure all of them are keenly aware of how stupidly high collision insurance is for young guys who buy their motorcycles, especially supersports. Since buying a motorcycle with a secured loan requires comprehensive insurance, it makes supersports prohibitively expensive for a lot of the target demographic.

What was their answer? Start offering credit cards so that young guys could still buy the bikes. If you buy a bike with unsecured credit, *poof* no collision insurance requirement. The problem with that is that with the economic crisis easy credit dried up and crushed the customer base.

Maybe it is totally unfeasible, but I think what the motorcycle companies should've done was pushed hard to get better rider education programs implemented, and made them more widely available. Include an entry to the MSF (which needs to be improved IMO) with a new bike and make sure there are enough classes to go around. This would have two major benefits. One, hopefully with less crashes insurance rates would go down. Two, with less crashes and less injuries you'll keep more people in the sport, and get more new people into it.

But as we've talked about many times before, the bigger problem is that all of the motorcycle manufacturers in the United States haven't done a good job of marketing motorcycles to the masses. They're all fighting for a slice of a small pie rather than making a bigger pie. Bikes like the CBR250 and NC700 are a good step towards addressing that, but Honda has to do a better job of marketing those bikes to people who aren't already riding.