Opinion: Yamaha R3, MT-03 have lost the plot!

Last November, I was riding two fine Yamahas on the best road I’ve ever ridden in my life. This place is called Chiang Mai in Thailand and is known for its epic corners. I rode the R3 and the MT-03 for around 700km over three days, and I absolutely loved these machines. On the last day of the ride, I got a hint of the expected pricing of these bikes, and I was left disappointed.

The Yamaha R3 carries a price tag of Rs. 5.55 lakh, on-road, and the MT-03 is a bit cheaper at Rs. 5.49 lakh,s on-road. A majority of the Indian consumers were waiting to know the exact prices of these bikes, and when they did, the overall excitement fizzled out. Many were expecting the bike to be at least a lakh cheaper, including us, but Yamaha decided to out- price these beautiful CBU machines. As a result of this, the R3 and the MT-03 could never reach the sales numbers the Japanese brand had expected.

We spoke with a few Yamaha dealers who are allowed to sell these two bikes. Almost all of them sounded disappointed for two reasons – due to such high pricing, they aren’t able to convert customers who come to check out these two bikes. They have a lot of walk-ins, but the conversion rate is extremely poor. Due to this, they aren’t able to maximise sales of these high-margin motorcycles. Plus, they occupy some good showroom space. The dealers also mentioned that Yamaha isn’t aggressive in making dealers buy the R3 and the MT-03 in big numbers as they do for their other mass-market motorcycles. So that’s a big relief for them.

According to the dealers, the majority of the consumers who enquire about these two bikes have previously owned Yamaha motorcycles. In fact, one of the main reasons for bringing these two bikes to India was to allow R15 and MT-15 riders to upgrade to bigger and more powerful motorcycles. While the intent is absolutely right, the pricing isn’t.

Yamaha isn’t known to make any price corrections, so there’s very little chance of the R3 and the MT-03 getting cheaper. Their money-making models such as the R15 and the FZ series are doing extremely well. So, there isn’t any real pressure to bring large sales volumes for its parallel-twin models anytime soon. I continue to let people know how great these bikes are but it does get extremely difficult to justify the price tag.