Remember when Japanese motorbikes started pouring into the western world? Probably not, unless, like me, you’re a boomer. As a kid, I grew up in the UK during an age when “Made in Japan” meant something that was cheaply and shoddily produced and broke almost as soon as you got it out of the box. Japan was desperate to recover from the pasting it had received during the Second World War. Anything that could earn some export currency was being cranked out as fast as possible.
My own teenage motorcycle aspirations revolved around the products from BSA, Norton and Triumph – good, solid British engineering – or so we had been trained to believe. Those small, early Japanese bikes which flooded into the UK in the 1960s, with their weird front forks, engines hanging out there in space, oddly hunch-back fuel tanks, and engine cases which looked as though they were made of tin-foil, did nothing to sway the likes of me away from the Brit Iron. We assumed they had been produced with the same post-war mentality and cheap materials as other junky consumer goods.
Unlike many kids my age, I didn’t grow up with a negative attitude to Japan. After surviving forty-seven bombing raids over Germany, my father had spent 1946 as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, returning with a great affection and respect for the Japanese people and culture. This rubbed off on me, but it wasn’t enough to overcome my prejudices against their two-wheeled products.
We all know the rest of the story. Superior engineering. Superior design. Superb metallurgy. Innovative, powerful and reliable motorcycles which didn’t leak. “Made in Japan” quickly became a by-word for excellent quality and reliability while the British industry floundered and failed.
And now it’s the turn of the Chinese. Read enough comments on motorcycle forums and it won’t be long before someone trots out the same old lines about “cheap Chinese rubbish.” Some of these comments may have been based on experience as, for years now, the bottom end of the motorcycle market has been flooded with a dizzying array of cheaply produced motorbikes and scooters. I just checked online retailer Alibaba. They are still out there; trail bikes, electric scooters, 400cc road rockets – all dirt cheap and the variety is endless. And we’ve all heard the stories of breakable plastic cogs, self-destructing electrical systems and limited parts support.
Does that mean that China will, forever be doomed to producing low quality bikes? Think about Royal Enfield in India. For decades they produced the same old leaky plonkers, barely changed from the original 500 and 350 Bullets that had first seen life in Redditch, England in the late 1940s. New owners, new management and a new factory in Chennai and suddenly Royal Enfield is producing stylish, quality, robust motorcycles that are a match for anything in their class, regardless of its global origin.
还记得那些意图的第一个现代和起亚汽车ched the western world’s marketplace? Wretched, self-destructing, tatty little junkboxes with only their low retail price to recommend them. And what happened? Those companies quickly realized that quality sells and now both make cars which are as good as anything else on the market, no matter where they’re made.
China seems to be on the same trajectory. Companies like CFMoto, Benda and Kove are now working on ranges of motorcycles aimed squarely at the core of the European and North American motorcycle industry. CFMoto and Kove have ADV bikes in the ‘middleweight adventure’ category. Whether they are competitive in performance, quality and durability with the more well established brands remains to be seen, but they look the part, and the intention is clearly there to earn a place in the marketplace.
Some Chinese companies don’t seem satisfied to simply follow existing trends. Benda, for instance, has exhibited the intriguingly styled LFC 700, a 680cc liquid cooled inline four, stretched out, fat tire cruiser, while Gaokin is developing a 1000cc V-twin cruiser for the local, and possibly the European market. It looks sufficiently different that it’s not just a cheap copy of existing V-twin cruisers. So don’t be surprised if, in a few years Chinese-built bikes are as high quality as their counterparts built elsewhere.
No doubt there will be companies which fall by the wayside, but if history can tell us anything about the future, it’s this: in a few years, Chinese motorcycle company names will be as well known as Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki, and we, the motorcycle public will be thankful for it.
