Quote:
Originally Posted by Carnage
Yamaha is releasing the 250 to India. Not the US. Changing to a higher cc will not bring them more business especially if it's gonna be a grand more expensive. I would suggest they create a 4cyl 250cc engine with duel front disk, efi, new exterior design. Just doesn't make sense to built a 300cc bike for only one market. The 250 is in all markets that kawi sales in.
I still call BS till I have proof.
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We are discussing TWO rumors. The other rumor is that Yamaha is making one for the US/world market, which is why I said over and over "
IF Yamaha..." before most of my statements about why it
could make sense. It may be that Kawi is just waiting to see what Yamaha does before playing their hand: If Yamaha announces nothing, we get an unchanged 250. If Yamaha does intend to crowd their market, we get a distractingly close but distinguished offering to steal their and Honda's thunder. It may be BS, but it just makes sense.
If they only increased the cylinder size and kept the current design there's nothing that would make it measurably more expensive to produce beyond minimal one-time R&D and re-certification costs (EPA, DOT, etc), and yet people would gladly pay a little more to get more (covers that). If they also added FI, then it would have to go up significantly and would push closer to a grand but both could be added for the cost of FI alone (estimated at about $500). Standardizing FI would actually LOWER the cost of producing the FI model worldwide with less differences to accomodate on the assembly line and greater economies of scale. Sleeving back down to 250ccs for certain markets would be negligible. Rather than assuredly losing some customers to Honda and Yamaha if they do nothing, they could do minimal work and be a clear performance leader in the sub-500cc market (sub-600cc these days). That would attract quite a few beginner bikers who were on the fence about a small-displacement bike and even many who would have been perfectly fine with a 250 from them or a competitor: "An extra 50ccs in the same price range as the Honda and Yamaha 250 offerings without going up to a significantly more dangerous class for a beginner? *shrug* Why not? I'm still getting an easy-to-ride, power-limited, fuel-efficient learner's bike with all the advantages of the previous model and its competition." Think about it.