Quote:
Originally Posted by ninjaone
I have no doubt Kawasaki will put together a brilliant bike, I just don't think the market will bear a 5000$+ almost-250. I'm guessing the highest they will go is 4999 on the 300 unless they keep the 250 around to fight the CBR250.
The US market is unique: highly price competitive on new models and a bit saturated in the used market so really it's a buyers market. If the CBR250 was really eating Kawasaki's sales, and it was already cheaper and slower, I'm not sure what Kawasaki's strategy is by bringing out a faster more expensive bike.
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No point in keeping both 250 and 300
To compete with the CBR they had to upgrade the instrument panel and include FI in US/Canada (alrdy FI in Europe & Asia) which would have pushed the cost of the bike higher anyways so they would've had to offer something extra for people to buy it. They probably decided to shift the entry-level market from 250cc to 300cc since it probably doesn't cost them much more to build a 300cc engine (they'll stick with the 250cc engine in Asia where owning a >250cc bike is too expensive due to government regulations/taxes)
Remember that KTM is looking to launch a 350cc bike in 2014 so the Ninja 300 will kind of be able to compete with that. Honda will probably stick with the 250 for a few years to see how the market plays out. If the 300-350cc market succeeds then Honda will be forced to upgrade their bike and try to catch up, but if that market fails (most likely due to higher pricing) then Honda will come out ahead
I think the 300-350cc market will definitely succeed since it'll give people the little extra power that they want on the highway and I'm sure more people will be willing to hold onto their bikes for a longer period of time
Another idea on pricing is similar to what they did when the 08 Ninja came out -- spread the price increase across 2 model years:
07 Ninja $2999
08 Ninja $3499
09 Ninja $3999
Something like
$4500-$4800 for 2013
$4800-$5000 for 2014
I still think $5k would be too much, but on the other hand if it was a 350 then
