Honda will launch four new two-wheelers in India in the current financial year. This latest development was confirmed to BikeWale by Honda’s top officials.
These new products will carry new names and won’t be related to any of the current brand names. Out of the four new two-wheelers, two are motorcycles and the other two will be scooters. While the company didn’t divulge details about three of these products, it did talk about its plans to launch the Africa Twin in India. This launch is expected to happen in July and the Indian market would only get the dual clutch transmission (DCT) version. The Africa Twin with the manual gearbox won’t be on sale in the country. The interesting bit is that the Japanese manufacturer will assemble this parallel-twin adventure bike in India, making it the second Honda bike, after the CBR650F to be sold as a completely-knocked-down (CKD) unit.
Honda says that the focus of the upcoming new products have been to make it fun and commuter friendly at the same time. This makes us believe that maybe Honda is trying to do what it did with the Hornet 160R – focus primarily on its styling and also offer a good number of features. The Navi was also a part of Honda’s ‘fun’ strategy, thanks to which this two-wheeler managed to find 50,000 homes since it went up on sale in the 2016 Auto Expo.
Other than these four products, Honda will continue to introduce updated bikes and scooters, which would get new colours and features. We hope the Japanese manufacturer gets the PCX 125 to India because this scooter looks cool and different and thanks to products like the Aprilia SR 150, Indian buyers are ready to accept sporty and unconventional scooters.