Modern Vespa

https://advrider.com/get-ready-for-made-in-india-honda-motorcycle-engines/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=12_21_2021

Probably a good move by Honda if they maintain their high quality standards.

Interesting: My company had a division selling in Japan. I had the good
opportunity to meet one of the Japanese managers visiting our home office.
This was years ago. He said Japan would have a manufacturing advantage
until Japanese workers demanded equivalent high wages like the USA
and Europe.

I always thought Japan would hold close engine and transmission production,
while allowing assembly out of the country.

I expect the Japanese worker is not to excited about this out sourcing.

Bob Copeland

What's wrong?
It's all about mixing things up now.

Japanese company's of all sort now have production sites outside Japan: In China, Vietnam, Philippines, in Europe aso.

Lately, they have been focused on bringing production back to Japan. Honda is putting together 50cc scooters for their arch-rival Yamaha, and is moving production out of China.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Honda-repatriating-popular-motorbike-production-from-China

In 1960 or so, the guy who was elected PM of Japan ran on the promise of doubling wages for everyone in ten years. At the time, Japan had a thriving textile industry, but the Japanese govt. decided to focus on heavy equipment and machinery. Japan did very well for a while, and in the 1980s were the global powerhouse. Since then, they've sort of coasted, and lost a lot of manufacturing capacity to S. Korea and China. The head of Sanyo, which is now gone, said he never heard of Hisense, the largest air conditioner manufacturer in the world, until the day they bought Sanyo. There are about twenty years commonly called the lost years, when Japan coasted on their previous success and ran up debt. Japanese debt is about 240% of gdp, much greater as a percentage than ours (precovid). Over the last decade or so, they've been interested in acting more like a modern superpower, and competing globally. Most of the time, when they do manufacture in other countries, they will send the old tooling and continue making something that isn't competitive with their domestic produced goods. The Helix ended up in Mexico, then China, before they finally gave the tooling to a Chinese company.

The Honda Rebel 500 i had a few years ago was made in Thailand. I believe it was not inferior in build quality to Japan made bikes.

do you folks not read the article?

Hero has been making engines for honda for years in India, typically 125 and below and those have been used worldwide.

So no different then honda opening its own factory in india instead of paying Hero to do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_MotoCorp

Motovista,

Great great report. I think more countries are looking at repatriating production.
In the case of the USA, we allowed many countries to take advantage of us
with unfair trade tariffs.

I am a big advocate of open free trade. The problem, many countries are not
competitive due to a host of staggering local Govt taxing policies. They simply
cannot openly compete. The best thing we have done recently is kill NAFTA.
The European Union has a whopping tax on the import of Harley Davidsons

Despite this, I will buy a Vespa no matter what it costs.

Bob Copeland

South Africa has no internal motorcycle production, so we do not impose import duty on motorcycles under 650cc and only a small rate (2,5%?) on motorcycles over 650cc.

In order to be 'in sinc" with some of our trading partners, the Ministry of Transport issued a regulation that required all motorcycles to be Euro4 compliant, so most of the Japanese Dual Sport bikes are no longer permitted for import.

A buddy of mine is from northern India. He told me if you wanted the tough cult bike you bought an Enfield, if you couldn't afford it or you just wanted inexpensive reliable transport, you bought a Hero Honda or a Bajaj scooter ( originally a Vespa built under licence, then just a copy... that was a long court case ) Hondas are proudly made in India because its a huge market and there are serious import tariffs. Not surprisingly it started with the damn Honda stepthrough, Honda has always been good at building where the sales are.

Bought a Honda Accord lately... made in America, even if its sitting on a showroom floor in Yokohama.

My Kawasaki Ninja's POS engine was made in Thailand, my buddies Suzuki has a Korean engine, my wife's Pontiac was made in Japan and they make Toyotas just up the road from me here in southern Ontario.

Surprised?

Its truly an international industry.

Volvo is a Chinese owned company ( Geely) and Buick has a plant in China to supply that Market.

All the Buick Envisions sold in this Country come from China.
Our Honda HR-V is built in Mexico as is my Scion iA. Which in actually a Mazda 2 sedan.

And it's too bad about the Kawasaki. All mine have been bulletproof, but they were built in Japan. One went 125,000 before I sold it.

My Kwacker ate camshafts and followers every 20,000 km

"Normal wear" the technical rep from Kawasaki Canada called it, even though the dealer said there was something wrong with the engine.

Needless to say it was my only Kawasaki. I realize anybody can make a bad bike, but the manufacturer should stand behind it when they do, especially when the dealer is asking for support for the customer.

It was 25% import tax on the Harley, that was in 2018. Not sure if it is still that high today.

That was 1 of the elements in a trade war between US and EU.
A bit childish game of if you do that then I do this.

I understood that this year US and EU agreed to end this what actually is a trade conflict on steel.

The bigger issue, in terms of loss of US manufacturing capacity, is that while in a country like Japan, rivals like Yamaha and Honda will work together to keep factories open and workers employed, and Honda pulled motorcycle production out of the US to keep their Japanese factories open, despite the market for big V-twins and Goldwings being here and the considerably higher cost of labor in Japan, there's often a race to the bottom in the US to get companies to locate in a particular area, and the companies don't exhibit a lot of loyalty to the area or the workers in that area when they see an opportunity to save money. Textiles are a good example of this. Much of the US textile industry was located in New England, primarily in the Fall River, MA area, until the companies that own the mills decided to go south, primarily to North Carolina, because the cost of production was lower. This worked out well for North Carolina, and not so good for everyone who worked in the industry in Massachusetts. Later, the same companies decided to move production to places like Honduras, because the cost of production was even cheaper. You can see the same thing with Furniture, and a host of other industries in the US. In many countries, localities can't pit themselves against each other in order to woo industry by offering tax breaks, so the incentives to relocate just aren't there.
Now that Chinese wages are higher than a lot of surrounding areas, there is a push by companies to move production to places like Vietnam.

It looks like Honda pulled the tooling for the 1968 CB350 out of storage and sent it to India. Check out the shocks and front forks.
One thing companies like Honda do is put production of vehicles that they can't sell at home anymore in the Countries where they can still legally sell them. The local infrastructure couldn't service and maintain high technology multi valve fuel injected four stroke motorcycles, and the roads would chew them up. So they make something that works in the local market, and Honda makes it as reliable as they can, given the limitations of the market in terms of price and infrastructure.. If you have the opportunity to see a Hero 110 scooter up close, you will see right away that there's no way they would ever be able to sell that thing in Japan. Much like LML made a crude and heavier version of the PX, the fit and finish on the Hero scooters is rough. Paint often looks like it's brushed on, the frames are crudely welded. But you could probably drop one off a building and ride it away. Now that consumers in India have more disposable income, there is a market for bigger bikes.

Ryan F9 has a great video titled something like what's the best motorcycle brand. He got samples of first service oil change oil from new bike owners for many different brands then sent them to an oil analysis lab.

Assuming more crap in the oil equates to less quality:

Royal Endfield (new made in India 650 engine) was the best.

BMW and KTM were next

Japanese brands were lumped in the middle

Italian brands were significantly worse

The Chinese brand was off the charts awful.

Hardly scientific with a sample size of one but interesting eh?

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting it.

Motovista, Wolf, Petercc,

This forum is golden with the breath of knowledge from you guys.

I had to have the classic Vespa. The 150 level Vespa was not enough for
my weight and also getting out of town on the expressway. When the
300 came along I was sold. I maintain it well and ride it all the time.

But, when I go out of town, it is a Japanese machine that has always
brought me home - never failed me once. My Suzuki Burgman 400AN
has been amazing for 48,000 miles. Tires. oil, fluids. belts changed
exactly as the manufacture recommends (not cheap) but worth every
reliable mile.

When I get home after a four day +2000 mile, I always have pride in
my Suzuki and immediately wash the bugs and road grim off it. It is
almost like I am saying thank you to that piece of metal and plastic.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Bob Copeland
Minnesota

I remember rebuilding many Kawa top ends due to faulty valve gear. Mostly this was the twin cylinder 305cc Ninja motors. Kawasaki had a production problem on several batches of those bikes. All fixed ok after that but the motor gained a reputation for being fragile. It actually wasn't.

I remember the 305 GPz, back in college I wanted one of those so bad I could taste it. Passed on it because of the reliability problems.

Saved up my hard earned pennies from part time jobs and work between semester towards a nice GS400 Suzuki...

And then bought a BMW R27, the single cylinder 250 from the sixties instead.

It wasn't quick but it was so quiet, comfortable and classy and the little bugger would cruise all day at highway speeds with the lovely Sonia snuggled up on the back... nice!

Then I discovered the price of BMW parts, so after two years and no small amount of riding it had to go.

Kept the girl though...