Honda targets sales of 200 CBR 650Fs in India by March 2016

Since launch in August, the high-priced flagship bike has already sold 53 units in India.

By Amit Panday

16 Sep 2015

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The CBR 650 F, which retails for Rs 760,970 (ex-showroom Mumbai), has sold 53 units in 2 months.

Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI), which launched its first four-cylinder, midsized sportsbike, the CBR 650F, on August 4, 2015, aims to sell 200 units of this model by March 2016. The company, which began locally assembling this model at its Manesar plant in July this year, has already sold close to 53 units in one month since commercial launch.

HMSI had started accepting the bookings of the CBR 650F on July 10, the day it had launched its 110cc, 9bhp commuter motorcycle model, Livo.

Talking to Autocar Professional recently, Y S Guleria, senior vice-president (sales and marketing), HMSI, said: “We plan to sell close to 200 units of the CBR 650F by the end of this financial year.”

The company, which is currently assembling one unit per shift per day of this model, recorded total bookings of 27 units in July alone and August 2015 accounted for sales of another 26 units. This adds up to a healthy sales momentum of 53 units of the CBR 650F.

According to HMSI’s website, the liquid-cooled, in-line four-cylinder 649cc, 85bhp sportsbike has an ex-showroom price tag of Rs 760,970 (Mumbai). This converts to an on-road price of Rs 824,755 (Mumbai), which does not factor further payable items such as extended warranty, accessories and other heads.

The Honda CBR 650F, which is HMSI’s flagship product in India, is being currently retailed via HMSI’s shop-in-shop marketing and sales strategy that includes only 12 select showrooms under phase one besides the two existing Honda wing world showrooms located one each in Mumbai and Delhi. These select showrooms are located across Pune and Ahmedabad (west zone), Chandigarh and Delhi (north zone), Bhubaneshwar and Kolkata (east zone), Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi (south zone) and Lucknow and Indore (central zone).

Under phase two of the retail expansion of this model, HMSI plans to extend the CBR 650F’s sales via 20 outlets later in this financial year.

Going by the four-cylinder engine configuration, the Honda CBR650F competes with the likes of Benelli’s 84bhp, 600cc TNT600i and TNT600GT and Kawasaki’s 113bhp, 806bhp Z800 models in the midsized motorcycle segment. It is known that while the Benelli models are locally assembled at DSK Benelli’s assembly facility at Wai (near Pune), Kawasaki currently imports the Z800s as completely built units (CBUs) from Thailand.

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