Jump to content

The First Chinese Trials Bike


stelio10gr
 Share

Recommended Posts

12 hours ago, breagh said:

The way we're going the Chinese will be the only ones trading with us .

Anyone in the UK that criticises this needs to look at our own offerings, yes, nil .

 

It's a shame the UK motorcycle industry is no more.  Some of the world's best known brands started in the UK and it took a property developer to return Triumph to the market as a Kawasaki copy.  There are enough European trials manufacturers without really any need for another one in the UK.  The development costs of a small engine with such a limited market is really against any new entrant to the market.  Making a bike with another manufacturer's engine is the best way forward.  But that is more or less re-inventing the wheel.

I think all of us have to face up to the fact that the future of the UK is not manufacturing.  Come April this year what there is might well shut down.

I would love to expand our current business into trials bikes but with a new Beta costing less than 6k retail I doubt there is any money at all to be made in the trials market.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 
 
 
 
 
12 hours ago, ChrisCH said:

It's a shame the UK motorcycle industry is no more.  Some of the world's best known brands started in the UK and it took a property developer to return Triumph to the market as a Kawasaki copy.  There are enough European trials manufacturers without really any need for another one in the UK.  The development costs of a small engine with such a limited market is really against any new entrant to the market.  Making a bike with another manufacturer's engine is the best way forward.  But that is more or less re-inventing the wheel.

I think all of us have to face up to the fact that the future of the UK is not manufacturing.  Come April this year what there is might well shut down.

I would love to expand our current business into trials bikes but with a new Beta costing less than 6k retail I doubt there is any money at all to be made in the trials market.

Uk wasn’t in the EU when we had a motorcycle industry. What anyone does is up to them, but complacency was the reason for most of our industries to slowly ebb away in the face of foreign competition. We are not protected by our PC governments current and previous, look at how Honda had to tickle the Spanish to arrive at a limited number of Hondas being made as Montesa’s to allow other models to be imported etc. The UK should take a step back and stop pandering to being PC, threaten to limit French car imports and Spanish car imports for a start. Stop obtaining qoutes from other foriegn rail transport manufacturers when we have a UK company employing hundreds of UK workers already making the rolling stock. I could go on but our downfall is obvious, we worry too much about offending people in other countries. 

The trials market is a limited one, but the sport originated in UK and just look how we got romped over by all and sundry. From the 20 or so UK companies making competition machinery relying on Villiers engines at the strock of sn accountants pen the whole lot went down the pan. As you suggest, using another manufacturers engine is what that old industry was doing, no different to now, the business model was proven but we in the UK failed to capitalise on the major manufacturers for engines...we had no trouble sourcing everything else!

Roll on BREXIT we’ll just have to stand on our own feet again and get on with it...we did alright before the EU involvement so why think we will sink. The EU crats will need someone else to feather their exorbitant salaries, we can put our money to better use at home.

Edited by section swept
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
 
 
19 hours ago, nigel dabster said:

Surely its the opposite, why buy a new overweight fourstroke when you can get a really good secondhand bike for the same money, cant see the logic.

It really isn't that overweight and in Canada the most common place to sell stuff is on kijjij if you search all of Canada there are currently 20 used trials bikes for sale from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean (which is a huge area) only 10 of those bikes are newer than 2001. We can buy new Beta, GG, Montesa, Sherco, Scorpa,  EM, TRS, Vertigo and now TW but finding a used bike for a good price is really tough.

https://www.kijiji.ca/b-motorcycles/canada/trial/k0c30l0

  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I'm probably going to be looking to upgrade my bike come spring, and as Michael_t above has mentioned, there are very few bikes available in the used market in Canada here.

Now, if I was looking at purchasing a $5000 Can used bike, while I'm sure come spring there will be more than 20 or so up on kijiji, at $5600 new for a TW, it has certainly grabbed my attention.

My concern, that I've yet to see addressed with the TW, is the resale value of it as a one or two year old bike.

A $5000 used "brand" name bike will most likely hold it's value for a few years, will the TW?

We can only speculate, as it depends how many are sold in Canada, how they hold up, the reputation that they will have acquired in the first few years, parts availability and the list goes on...

All I can do is watch with interest at this point, and hope they maybe send one out west to be demo'd or something.

From everything I have seen, they do look good, but only time will tell how they perform and hold up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
9 hours ago, section swept said:

.Roll on BREXIT we’ll just have to stand on our own feet again and get on with it...we did alright before the EU involvement so why think we will sink. The EU crats will need someone else to feather their exorbitant salaries, we can put our money to better use at home.

I'm afraid that leaving the EU will finish off the UK and leave it with no manufacturing at all.  The rest of your post is rubbish as well.  However, this is not the place to debate the subject.  We will not have a UK made trials bike in the next 20 years and I would personally bet that much more of the current Triumph production will move from Hinckley to Thailand.  That is a shame as I would like to see the UK produce bikes as much as anyone.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
  • Dislike 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
 

I think it would be possible to revive a UK brand, but clearly developing a new engine is not cost effective.  The obvious thing is to buy in an engine and build a UK frame.  There are few engines available, The obvious one being Rotax as they are one of the few manufacturers that sell just engines.  I have no idea if the Rotax is suitable for this application?  They are sold for go-karts and I would think therefore have a different power delivery to that which a trials bike needs.  I'd love to hear if anyone has any expertise in this area.  Also I don't know if this meets the current Euro 4 needs?  Even with the UK out the EU we will still need to comply with all the European standards if we are to sell into that market.

There is a good spread of technology there already with the Italian and Spanish bikes and Montesa Honda benefiting from the new EU-Japan deal.  It would be a very tough market to enter, particularly as an outsider.  That said the brands like BSA are very well known and could be a selling point, however you would first need to buy the brand from whoever owns it.

Basically we are reinventing the wheel and the way to go is to buy the Chinese bike!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
8 hours ago, ahh_me2 said:

I'm probably going to be looking to upgrade my bike come spring, and as Michael_t above has mentioned, there are very few bikes available in the used market in Canada here.

Now, if I was looking at purchasing a $5000 Can used bike, while I'm sure come spring there will be more than 20 or so up on kijiji, at $5600 new for a TW, it has certainly grabbed my attention.

My concern, that I've yet to see addressed with the TW, is the resale value of it as a one or two year old bike.

A $5000 used "brand" name bike will most likely hold it's value for a few years, will the TW?

We can only speculate, as it depends how many are sold in Canada, how they hold up, the reputation that they will have acquired in the first few years, parts availability and the list goes on...

All I can do is watch with interest at this point, and hope they maybe send one out west to be demo'd or something.

From everything I have seen, they do look good, but only time will tell how they perform and hold up.

Resale is an issue and you will always lose less buying second hand but if you compare buying a 9 to 10k new bike that will be worth 4 to 6k in a couple of years to buying a $5.5k new bike there is little chance you will lose as much. If you can buy a good used bike and sell it for more than you paid for it after a few years of use that will always be your best deal (and what I have done in the past before biting the bullet and buying a brand new Sherco) but not always possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
  • Create New...