Kind of blows your mind doesn't it , they sell all these V-Twins , NM4 Vultus & a bunch of other stuff I wouldn't ever want , when the ST -type MCs can exist instead , & the technology is there to make them .
Yup - agreed. As I've mentioned before, I work with the auto industry in Detroit and these folks are pretty canny about business decisions. When they do - or do not - build something, there is almost always a good reason and it is invariably based on data and money.
Occasionally, however, they do get it waaaay wrong and that is usually a result of plain old ego on the part of some executive. Recent examples of that phenomenon include: the early GM Oldsmobile diesels and Cadillac 4-6-8 engines, the early Ford Windstar van built without a sliding door on the left side, the Honda Del Sol and of course, the granddaddy of all boo-boo cars....the Pontiac Aztec. In bikes, you may recall turkeys such as the Suzuki RE5 Wankel, the Yamaha TX750 (mid-70s), and some of the hideous cruiser bikes of the 80s. Granted, some of those machine were technically really cool and others sold quite well, but in the main, they weren't nice to ride, nor were they pretty, or they cost their manufacturers huge sums of money which was never recovered.
Overall, I would expect that decision making in the motorcycle industry is pretty much the same as in automotive - except that I see Honda with bewildering array of models - few of which interest riders like me in the least. I sense that the firm has somehow lost its ability, or desire, to listen to the market. It is remarkable that Yamaha, BMW and Kawasaki continue, year after year, to
each make a good living selling FJRs, K-bikes and Concours 14s and yet Honda has no offering to compete in that market segment.
With their size and engineering and marketing muscle, they could undersell at least one or two of the above and knock them out of this segment. Combined with the Gold Wing, which is a great machine but really in a different part of the large bike market, Big Red could dominate - but they don't. Over the last 40+ years, the Gold Wing has competed with, and dispatched similar offerings from each of the others (Yamaha Venture, Suzuki Madura, Kawasaki KZ1300 Brontosaurus) - and it now, to a good extent, owns the non-Harley big tourer market - at least in North America.
Very odd.
