OK, the topic was Chineese bikes.
China put someparts together and and a name.
No tradition or knowledge

I also agree regarding Indian bikes.
They have large companies that have been producing bikes for along time.

Very interesting for travelling somwhere (South America), buy one to use and sell when return. They are good enough for that. Both TVS and Enfield
At very low cost.

TVS is one example (even producing the BMW 310 and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVS_Motor_Company

Kirk Wilson went to Colombia.
He bought an TVS apache and used it for a 20 000 miles trip.
And used it hard.
I took him all the way. To a very look cost.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....4,203,200_.jpg

I swapped my Chinese scooter for a Kymco after doing my homework, Honda designed their engines & riding it (and spannering it) you would think it is indeed a Japanese bike.

Have a Greek mate who`s old man runs a scooter shop & he`s tried the lot, Jap, Chinese, Euro scoots & bang for buck they say the Kymco wins all day long & Kymco is now their entire fleet of rental scooters now.

And carton of Stella fits in the OEM rack just perfect.



Mezo.

Sounds a bit uninformed to me if you state that a country which is building motorcycles since since 1951 and which has got around 200 motorcycles companies who produced in 2020 in pandemic times 17Mio (19/2019) motorcycles, has no tradition and knownledge.

An export volume of 5.252 million units with a value of 3.142 billion USD isn`t nothing compared to the total sales of 673800 japanese motorcycles units in 2020?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...omestic-brand/

Chinese motorcycles manufactures targets markets with low cc and high license numbers where japanese manufactures aren`t competitive due to models, pricing and ignorance:
China: 23 Mio
India: 20 Mio
Indonesia: 8 Mio
Vietnam: 3 Mio
Thailand: 2 Mio

Yes, chinese motorcycles aren`t made by best of of quailty and contemporary technic. But don`t tell me that there is a big difference in both compared to indian motorcycles like Royal Endfield. R.E. is building the same shit as ever with little updates in technic or quality.
How long ago since a lot of people didn`t even recognized or thought about R.E. because of their unreliability through antiquated technic and design which only got hip in the past years?

Fact is that chinese motorcycles are offered by a low price in adequate technic to markets that got irgnored by "the manufactures" for years. There is nothing wrong about this because you cannot compare chinese bikes with the standard of tripple high priced japanese bikes. Chinese bikes offer value for money including all hazzles you buy if don`t have an income to afford quality and tech standard of western industrial country markets.

If you are real adventurer, choose a chinese bike and paper maps for your tour - with this you buy the garantee to follow the roots of motorcycle travellers of the 1950/60s. And if you will be long enough on the road, you will definitely sometimes meet another traveller with a modern, better in quality and bigger than 400cc chinese motorcycle. R.E. is a nice blueprint how to enter western quality orientated markets with a low price, refreshed low tech bike vested with a retro looking of the good old times!

We shouldn`t state that all chinese is only poor crap, we should better be aware that chinese manufactures are sitting on a high potential to kill and change established "good qualty motorcycle companies" in the coming years. The KTM/CF Moto cooperation is a good example were the fruits of future are hanging...

__________________

Selling price is unrelated to cost.

The established brands have higher costs but not because of testing (this isn't 1930) or some difference in material spec (Chinese engineers use the same databases). Running a GP team and paying pensions to people who retired 40 years ago hurts more. The difference is small. Margins at anything from zero on new vehicles to 5000% on parts are way more significant. None of this tells you anything about a product.

Would you buy a £20000 Wun-Hung-Lo GC125 on the basis is costs more than a Honda so must be better? Why would the same bike in the USA be 30% less? Margin and market or maybe they only sell the Yanks the Friday afternoon bikes?

The difference in quality is down to culture and systems. Japanese manufacturing culture works just as well in Sunderland or Thailand. This is what drives the production worker to tell his supervisor about dodgy bits and the CEO to congratulate both. The Chinese manager berates anyone who needs his help to hide the mistakes, just like the places that made **** coloured Austin Allaggro's in tge 1970's.

Andy

As being in a sales position and selling my product into 23 country markets the wholesale price difference of my product is up to 500% for this.

With my last company we were sponsors of Ferrari in the F1 for over 10 years. We thought about motorcycle sponsoring in form of 2 bikes team. Cost you around 2Mio € per year for rider and satellite team if you rent it e.g. from Honda.

The japanese social insurance system is comparable to the german one. Difference is that japan had to reform the system in 1992 to reach OECD standard. Still common in japan is that companies can decide how to pay a pensioner: monthly retirement pay or a one time gratuity. 60% of the companies choice a gratuity.

China established in 1990 a completely new social insurance system consisting of old age-, health-, accident-, unemployment- and maternity insurance. For old age insurance the employer pays 20% of the wage bill and 8% is paid by the employee. Health insurance is 10% of wage bill and fully paid by the employer as well 1% for accident insurance. Umployemnt insurance is 2-3%(depending on region) paid by employer and 1% paid by employee. Official unployemnt rate in China is 4% but it´s estimated that 10-15% is more realistic.

If you compare the systems and incomes in relation to the cost of living both countries differ mainly in the power of their own economy. Means japan is loosing more and more because they are bankrupt by numbers since years.

__________________

The only thing I know about Chinese bikes is that the parts for them once they are more then a couple of years old are virtually unobtainable . Have had a number of walk in to our parts dept with blokes trying to source bits for makes that you cant even find on Google......latest one was a starter motor for some Suzuki 500 knock off.......GN single I think from way back when . I'm sure Ted will fill in the gaps .
If u r intent on owning one I would think that mechanical competency should be high on ur list........if not leave well alone

I suppose that is the silver lining.

You will learn mechanics FAST

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

I have a friend here in Colombia that has been riding his 200 pulsar for 575000 km all over Colombia and has never rebuilt the eng I pointed out to him that the valve train needs a lille attention due to after firing, sloppy timing chain I suspect
The Pulsar is a well built machine China has along way to go
Chinese bikes were made to be throw away you get what you pay for

575,000 kilometers is about 345,000 miles. On a 200cc Bajaj? Surely this must be a typo...

__________________
Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250

Nope He has done all the Maintenance and looked after this bike this is the reason it has lasted so long. if you have your cheap bike maintained in a cheap shop, the outcome is a bike maintained poorly and it will fall apart . Here in Colombia the average bike mechanic is taught how to pound square pegs into round holes with a rock. So it doesn't matter what kind of bike you have, if you take it to the average shop will turn to junk in no time
it all boils down to the correct tools and how the mechanic uses them pretty much anywhere
there are 9 million bikes here of every make and model Bjaja is huge ATk bigger