Honda may roll out CBF Stunner by August

16 Mar, 2008

Engineers at Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India (HMSI) might have finally designed the goose that could lay golden eggs for them.

According to sources, the Japanese two-wheeler giant is engrossed in secretly testing out a new motorcycle at its factory in Maneswar, Gurgaon. Codenamed KWFA and christened the CBF Stunner, the new bike is likely to hit the showrooms by August this year and is supposed to sport an ex-showroom price tag of around Rs 52,000.

With a 125 cc mill, it churns out around 11 bhp and looks like a ‘baby Karizma’. With India’s motorcycle market being pulled down by shrinking sales of the bread and butter 100cc segment and manufacturers increasingly turning to the premium125cc segment for profit, this might be a strategic move by HMSI to augment the 12% market share it holds in this segment.

HMSI has been known to engineer great bikes, its 150cc Unicorn and 125cc Shine being shining examples. Now, the CBF Stunner that has been designed in Japan boasts of five gears, drop dead gorgeous looks and will be closely followed by a fuel-injected model, which company officials are calling the KWFF.

But when contacted, this is all that a HMSI spokesperson said, “We know of no such bike. But by any chance, are you talking about the scooter Aviator that we have launched?” Now, there is no doubt that burgeoning scooter sales have been fattening HMSI’s bottom line for some time now but then, even the best of sales figures are not magical enough to transform a geared motorcycle into a gearless scooter!

But the transformation has been taking place somewhere else. Sales in the 100cc segments have stagnated and in some cases even suffered a dip. Bajaj Auto, the country’s second largest two-wheeler manufacturer have been hit the most (almost 20%) in that category with MD Rajiv Bajaj contemplating more 125cc launches in the next few months after the company’s much hyped ‘wonder-bike’, the 125cc XCD, failed to meet sales expectations of around 55000-75000 bikes per month.

At the same time Society of India Automobile Manufacturer’s (SIAM) data shows that 125cc+ sales have grown by almost 15% over the period of April 2007-January 2008 while the 100cc segment has suffered a negative growth of over 21%. So the action definitely is going to take place in the 125cc+ category with domestic player TVS Motors too banking big on its new 125cc Flame to be launched tomorrow.

Close on the heels of TVS, India Yamaha Motors has also launched two 125cc bikes namely. the Gladiator Type SS and RS.