The Complete History of Yamaha Motor Company

Virtually nothing scholarly has been published in English about the Yamaha Motor Company, although it is today Japan’s second-largest manufacturer of motorcycles. In order to periodize the company’s development properly, we must again focus upon its prewar and wartime manufacturing experience, which is the root of both its technical skills and many of its developmental assets.

Yamaha was founded by its corporate predecessor, Nippon Gakki (Japan Musical Instrument Manufacturing Company), when the latter elected to enter the motorcycle business in 1955. Nippon Gakki was founded in 1897 in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, by Yamaha Torakusu (born 20 May 1851). Yamaha was the son of a samurai and had studied horology, the science of timekeeping devices, under a British engineer in Nagasaki in 1868.

Yamaha Motorcycle History


Watches and clocks were imported to Japan at that time, but lacking the necessary investment capital Yamaha was unable to take advantage of the domestic market for them. In July 1887, however, the headmaster of a local elementary school called upon Yamaha to repair its organ, and Yamaha went on to build his first reed organ in the same year. He founded the Yamaha Wind Instrument Works in Naruko-cho, Hamamatsu, in March 1888.


As orders for organs came in, the firm grew steadily from ten employees at the outset to roughly one hundred within a year. In 1890, the company’s capital stock reached ¥50,000 and Yamaha erected a new factory for the production of organs in Itaya-cho, Hamamatsu. In April of that year, its organ placed second at Japan’s third National Industrial Encouragement Exhibition.


These exhibitions involved a variety of different branches of manufacturing and were tremendously important to Japan’s burgeoning industrial community. Around the turn of the twentieth century they were staged at irregular intervals ranging from one to seven years. Like machines and automobiles, musical instruments required extreme precision and craftsmanship to produce, and Japan’s government sought to encourage firms in this industry, often by purchasing the winning entries for the Imperial Household Ministry. Thereafter, Yamaha’s domestic sales increased steadily, and the company records its first export sale of eighty-seven organs to Southeast Asia in 1892. When the firm incorporated as Nippon Gakki on 12 October 1897, its capital stock increased to ¥100,000.

Nippon Gakki began to research the manufacture of pianos in 1899 and began producing upright pianos the following year after acquiring the necessary parts and equipment. The company’s first grand piano was completed in 1902, and that year Nippon Gakki took top honours at the fifth Industrial Encouragement Exhibition for both its piano and organ designs. With the rise in the company’s woodworking skills, Nippon Gakki sought to diversify its products and began producing high-end wooden furniture in 1903.

In the following year, its piano was awarded the grand prize at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, which was a tremendous technical achievement given the extreme precision required to produce a world-class instrument of that scale. Nippon Gakki’s capital stock reached ¥600,000 in 1907, and in 1909 the company opened a store in Takegawamachi, in the Kyo¯bashi ward of Tokyo. Over the next several years the firm added phonographs, pipe organs, and harmonicas to its product line; its harmonicas shipped worldwide by 1914.

In 1917, president Yamaha Torakusu died at the age of sixty-four and was succeeded by Amano Chiyomaru. From this point the company began to expand and diversify rapidly. Nippon Gakki absorbed the Yokohama-based Nishikawa Musical Instrument Company in 1921 and added that firm’s Yokohama organ factory to its operations. In that year a branch office was opened in Kobe, followed by stores and offices in Osaka in 1922, Fukuoka City in 1925, and Taiwan in 1926. In 1923, in expectation of further sales in China, the company founded a store in Dalian and established a China sales division with ¥500,000 in operating capital.

Although Nippon Gakki’s operations were idled by a month-long strike by the Hamamatsu branch of the National Federation of Labour Unions beginning on 26 April 1926, the company succeeded in ending the walkout and resuming production in May. (Coincidentally, the union’s Hamamatsu branch was founded by Tsumura Juhei, who was an employee of the Suzuki Loom Works.) Nippon Gakki’s piano fabrication shop was staffed at the end of the 1920s by master carpenters and was not automated.

Meanwhile, during this phase of steady growth in sales, distribution, and engineering capability, in 1921 Nippon Gakki branched out yet again into a new and highly advanced product : propellers, specifically for fighter aircraft. The company’s steady refinement of its propeller manufacturing processes enabled it to acquire both the milling machines and the technical skills needed after the war to enter and compete successfully in Japan’s motorcycle industry. But the engineering experience earned by Nippon Gakki during this period is a subject to which Yamaha alludes only very briefly today. The design and manufacture of wooden propellers was a job uniquely suited to a maker of pianos and furniture, for these products all required accurate cutting, planing, sanding, and lacquering by experienced woodworkers.

In August 1921, Nippon Gakki’s capital stock had reached ¥3.48 million, and in 1922 the company moved its head office and its factory to a vast new manufacturing plant at 10-1 Nakazawa-cho¯ in Hamamatsu, where it is still located today. When president Amano Chiyomaru retired in April 1927, he was succeeded by Kawakami Kaichi (born 1 March 1885), who oversaw Nippon Gakki’s operations right through the war era.

With Japan’s invasion of Manchuria on 18 September 1931, the demand for propellers increased, and Nippon Gakki began to produce metal propellers at the request of the military. In order to improve upon its manufacturing processes, in 1933 the company sent a group of its engineers to Europe and the United States to observe the production of propellers there. The casting and milling of metal propellers required a significant investment in machine tools, and gradually this job became a major priority. After Japan’s invasion of China on 7 July 1937, Nippon Gakki found itself increasingly beholden to the military’s demands and correspondingly less able to produce musical instruments. In order to satisfy the demand for propellers, each of which took a week to produce, the company curtailed its production of pianos and organs.

In November 1937, a new plant was opened north of Hamamatsu at Tenryu City, where a modest number of smaller musical instruments continued to be produced. In that year, the president’s son, Kawakami Genichi (born 30 January 1912), joined Nippon Gakki as a production supervisor, having graduated from the Takachiho Higher School of Commerce in 1934. Genichi joined the firm at a challenging time. The National General Mobilization Law of April 1938 placed Nippon Gakki’s equipment, employees, and operating capital under the supervision of the Imperial Japanese Army. The company’s sawing and veneer departments were shut down, and piano and organ production therefore ceased. Nippon Gakki’s
principal task became the production of propellers and auxiliary fuel tanks for military aircraft.

As the firm’s new propeller research and production program went into operation, Nippon Gakki’s capital stock increased to ¥8.75 million and the company was designated a munitions factory. Despite these developments, Nippon Gakki managed to continue producing enough smaller musical instruments to warrant opening new stores in Nagoya, occupied Seoul, and Manchukuo in January 1940.

In September 1941, Nippon Gakki’s capital stock increased to ¥17.5 million, and after war with the United States broke out on 8 December, the demand for propellers rose once more. The company embarked upon an expansion plan that included the acquisition of a site in nearby Iwata City, Shizuoka prefecture, as well as the construction of a factory in Kitakami City, Iwate prefecture. The company was also ordered by the military to produce metal Hamilton Standard-type variable-pitch aircraft propellers for large bombers, which could be adjusted when the aircraft was on the ground. The manufacture of these metal propellers was laborious and time consuming, and by 1943 Nippon Gakki was in search of a way to automate the process. The president advised his materials section manager, Kubono Shinobu, that because Kubono was more familiar with business than with engineering, he should seek the advice of Honda Soichiro. Kubono did so, and though Honda was already a busy man, he agreed to assist Nippon Gakki with the automation of its propeller production system.

A talented engineer, Honda designed efficient cutting machines that could mill the surfaces of two propellers at the same time – in only thirty minutes. The principal financier of such research and design projects was, of course, the state, and much of its investment in wartime munitions manufacturing formed the basis for Japan’s foray into passenger car, truck, and motorcycle production after the war. Nippon Gakki’s propeller-cutting machinery, like the skills it earned casting and grinding metal propellers, was tremendously important for the company’s postwar operations.

Following the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway in June 1942, Japan’s strategic position against the United States worsened steadily. In October of that year Nippon Gakki’s plant in Nakazawa, Hamamatsu, was placed under the control of the navy, and its Tenryu¯ plant came under joint army-navy control. Orders for propellers fell 10 percent in August 1943, and the manufacture of musical instruments was officially halted in November 1944.

Yamaha Motorcycle History


Although the company’s capital stock increased to ¥30 million in the following month, production was interrupted on 7 December by the To¯nankai earthquake, which killed three workers and injured thirteen more. Moreover, the entire Nakazawa manufacturing plant was demolished : not one supporting column remained upright. In spite of the apparent scale of the destruction, however, all of the buildings’ foundations and floors, which were concrete, remained unbroken. For this reason, it was estimated that the workers could rebuild the plant within a month, and following a massive group reconstruction effort, production indeed resumed in the rebuilt factory on 15 January 1945.

Through the first half of that year, Hamamatsu was bombed with increasing frequency by US B-29s, and like the Suzuki Loom Works, Nippon Gakki began arranging to evacuate its facilities in order to safeguard its operations. In April 1945, the equipment in the company’s propeller manufacturing department was set up both in a nearby cedar forest and inside tunnels dug into the mountainside near Hamamatsu. Shortly afterward, Nippon Gakki’s music shops in Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe were lost when those cities were destroyed in incendiary bombing raids, and the company’s Tenryu factory was bombed on 19 May.

On the same day, seven bombs fell on the Nakazawa complex, destroying the musical instrument shop, the casting plant, and the woodworking shop. An area of 33,000 square metres (355,209 square feet) was burned in all. On 29 July, the Hamamatsu area came within reach of US naval artillery, which shelled Nippon Gakki’s remaining offices and factories at Tenryu and Nakazawa, shortly after which both sites were again struck by B-29s. Finally, Nippon Gakki evacuated its offices to Funagira, Tenryu. When Japan surrendered on 15 August, the company’s manufacturing operations, which had once employed over ten thousand workers, halted.


In the postwar era, Nippon Gakki recovered by producing small musical instruments. In October 1945, it resumed the manufacture of harmonicas and xylophones, and it began issuing accordions, horns, and guitars in 1946. On 18 June 1946, Emperor Hirohito, escorted by US military personnel, visited the company’s Hamamatsu plant to inspect its operations and its many musical instruments during one of several such tours about the country. This visit parallels that by Crown Prince Akihito to the Miyata Manufacturing Plant in the same year. Two months later, in August 1946, president Kawakami Kaichi was informed of his imperial nomination to Japan’s House of Peers. It is difficult to overlook the postwar nomination of the president of a former munitions corporation to the unelected upper house of Japan’s legislature, for the political continuum is striking. Nevertheless, on 6 October, the House of Peers voted 298 to 2 in favour of the Bill for Revision of the Imperial Constitution, which replaced the House of Peers with an elected House of Councillors. Emperor Hirohito promulgated Japan’s new constitution on 3 November 1946. When it went into effect six months later, Kawakami ran for his seat. His position as both an incumbent and a captain of industry provided the means necessary to run a successful campaign, and he was elected by his prefectural constituents in April 1947.

Nippon Gakki had resumed its export of harmonicas in January 1947 when it shipped twenty-four thousand units to the United States. As production expanded, the company closed its manufacturing plant in Iwate prefecture in February 1948 and rebuilt the casting plant at its home office in Nakazawa-cho in April. The construction of a new casting plant was a significant postwar milestone that once again enabled the company to cast its own machine parts, without which it would have had to depend on outside suppliers. Production of short, upright spinet pianos was under way by the spring, and their exports began in July. The firm’s capital stock, which had stood at ¥30 million in December 1944, reached an impressive ¥100 million by March 1949, putting it in a strong financial position in relatively short order. During this period, Nippon Gakki managed to survive in an industry that had converged from 126 musical instrument manufacturers to just 49.

When Nippon Gakki’s third-generation president, Kawakami Kaichi, became company chairman in September 1950, his thirty-eight-year-old son, Genichi, became president. Genichi had risen quickly to become the manager of Nippon Gakki’s Tenryu¯ factory during the war, and at the time he became president he was the company’s senior general manager. Like his peers Honda Soichiro and Suzuki Shunzo, he was a highly experienced manager with an understanding of mass-production systems born of wartime necessity. The pressures associated with curtailing Nippon Gakki’s manufacture of musical instruments and the expansion and automation of its propeller production processes occurred during Kawakami Genichi’s tenure. His assumption of the presidency also came at a more fortunate time than the point at which he had joined Nippon Gakki in 1937. Sales of musical instruments were rising steadily, and within three years of his becoming president, the firm had opened sales headquarters in Tokyo and Osaka and its capital stock had tripled to ¥300 million.


Yamaha Motorcycle History


The opportunity for Nippon Gakki to enter the motorcycle market came as Japan’s obligation to pay war reparations to East Asian nations was sharply curtailed. In 1948, Washington cancelled 90 percent of proposed reparations payments by Japan in the category of heavy industry and 60 percent in the munitions industry, in order to shore up the Japanese economy and prevent a possible Communist takeover.102 Japan’s obligation to pay reparations was further limited upon the signing in San Francisco of the Treaty of Peace with Japan on 8 September 1951 – a document known commonly as the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Although Japan eventually paid over ¥1 trillion in reparations and offered development aid to those nations that waived their right to collect the indemnity, many of the munitions manufacturers that had expected to make payments were absolved of that responsibility by the early 1950s.

This freed up many former munitions corporations to invest in their own operations. Yamaha records that Japan’s defeat came “tied together” with a proposed regime of reparations payment but that this obligation was later “loosened.”103 As a result, in May 1953, Nippon Gakki purchased a 1,700-square-metre (18,300-square-foot) site at Hamakita-machi, in Hamana-gun, Shizuoka, for a new manufacturing
plant. Into this new plant Nippon Gakki moved the high-efficiency cutting and milling machines that it had used to produce aircraft propellers – machines that had been sitting idle and under wraps since the war.

In July 1953, Kawakami Genichi left Japan for a ninety-day inspection tour of Europe and the United States, where he was shocked both by the level of automation in Western factories and by people’s comparatively high living standards. He returned to Japan convinced that he would have to develop an altogether new business. Although designed originally to make propellers, Nippon Gakki’s cutting machines had a great many potential applications, which Kawakami and his technicians set about researching. Together with the section chiefs of the firm’s casting plant and of its machine tool department, Kawakami considered producing sewing machines or transmissions, but the group concluded that there were already too many manufacturers of those products.

Next they thought about building scooters, but Fuji and Mitsubishi already dominated that market with their Rabbit and Silver Pigeon. Three-wheeled utility vehicles were also rejected because Daihatsu and Orient Industries (later Mazda) had a firm grip on that sector. Kawakami then decided that although Nippon Gakki might be a latecomer, it would compete against Honda and Suzuki in the motorcycle industry. Shortly thereafter, the chief of Nippon Gakki’s research section and the head of its engineering department were dispatched on an inspection tour of the top motorcycle manufacturing companies in Japan. This was not an uncommon practice, for the Hamamatsu Motorcycle Manufacturers’ Association founded by Suzuki and Kitagawa Motors had begun sponsoring such efforts to improve the technical capabilities of member firms and new market entrants.

What Nippon Gakki’s observers learned, however, was sobering. They could see that there was still a large disparity in quality between Japanese motorcycles and those produced overseas, and for this reason Nippon Gakki’s research and development group set its sights on the manufacturing standards of the world industry leaders. The key to success, they determined, lay in producing a machine that was equivalent to the best being manufactured in Europe, not in Japan. Kawakami’s firm was financially prepared to make the investment in developing a competitive product, but he wanted to be certain that his company could find a niche in the still-populous market. The product development team was well aware that domestic industry leaders like Honda were producing four-stroke engines, but those machines, while more powerful, had more complex parts than two-stroke engines and were also much more difficult to build. Two-stroke engines, meanwhile, were often more reliable, and Kawakami’s team therefore settled on the two-stroke engine as their design of choice.

Yamaha Motorcycle History


In 1954, two of Nippon Gakki’s engineers toured motorcycle production plants in West Germany and elsewhere in Europe before they tackled the job of building their own prototype. This research, which mirrors that undertaken by Honda Soichiro as he too toured American, British, and European motorcycle factories in the summer of 1954, was a critical dimension of Nippon Gakki’s development strategy. The team was impressed most by German designs, and it set its sights on a two-stroke, 125 cc motorcycle by the German firm DKW that had already been copied in the postwar era by a variety of companies. These included Harley-Davidson and the British firm BSA, both of which had been
given the design schematics as part of the war reparations paid by Germany to the United States and Great Britain. The 125 cc DKW was a patent-free design the war, which made reproducing it easier, and it was also an attractive motorcycle with a very reliable engine. Based upon that design, Nippon Gakki’s development team began work on a prototype in October 1953.

The designers cast their own parts and used the company’s war-era cutting machines to mill and finish them, giving them total control over the production of such critical components as the crankshaft, connecting rod, cylinder, and crankcase. As a wartime manufacturer of auxiliary fuel tanks for aircraft, Nippon Gakki had little trouble designing an appropriate fuel tank for its prototype – a job that had given Honda’s engineers considerable difficulty when designing their A-Type motorcycle in 1947. (Honda’s first aluminum tanks were riddled with tiny holes. To prevent them from leaking fuel, coats of extremely noxious lacquer had to be applied, which made several employees very ill.) Nippon Gakki’s initial casting know-how and equipment were far superior to those of its rival. In August 1954, the team produced the YA-1, an air-cooled, two-stroke, 125 cc machine with a two-tone colour scheme in maroon and ivory – earning it the nickname "Aka-tombo", or "Red Dragonfly".

The new prototype was put through a rigorous ten-thousand-kilometre endurance trial in order to be certain that it could be sold to the public without suffering mechanical breakdowns. The design performed well and, satisfied with its sales potential, in December 1954 Kawakami Genichi gave the go-ahead for full-scale production. In that month the company added a paint shop and an electrical components shop to its factory in Hamakita, which it named the Hamana plant. As Nippon Gakki had already established a series of music stores and business offices from Hiroshima to Sendai, building a nationwide motorcycle dealer network was less costly than for firms with no corporate presence in distant parts of Japan.

Yamaha Motorcycle History


When the Yamaha YA-1 went on sale in February 1955, customers responded well, and pleased with its market debut, Kawakami founded the Yamaha Motor Company, Inc., on 1 July 1955. The new company had 275 employees, and, armed with an initial ¥30 million in capital stock, it was expected by its founder to be a market leader. In order to secure that position, Yamaha’s engineers were well aware that their design would have to perform exceptionally in that month’s Mount Fuji Ascent Race.

Yamaha’s racing development team was fortunate to have a laboratory that featured a dynamometer for measuring torque and rotational speed, with which they were able to calculate horsepower. Each day the team plotted graphs of their engines’ performance as Kawakami pressed them to boost the YA-1’s output from 5 to 10 horsepower. Problematically, however, the race lab was tucked into a corner of Yamaha’s pipe warehouse alongside a row of its war-era cutting machines, where the temperature soared on summer days. Because hot air burns less efficiently than cooler air, the race engineers were forced to work late into the night in order to get decent results. The horsepower of the engines peaked around midnight, once the temperature had cooled, which meant that its race technicians typically went home at one or two o’clock in the morning. The race team also employed the dynamometer in a uniquely deceptive strategy.

On the day before most races, the riders of all the competing firms would usually go out and test the course, but the Yamaha team did not take advantage of this opportunity to practise because of the possibility of random engine trouble. Instead, its riders preferred to be seen drinking sake and enjoying themselves. But the Yamaha team would bring along a portable chassis dynamometer with which to test its engines. The team kept the dyno “camouflaged” until race day, when they would set it up just before the start of the event. The team then ran each of their motorcycles as a stationary bike and recorded the data needed to determine peak horsepower output. Whatever the altitude or temperature, the engineers could tune the engine’s ignition timing and set up the carburetor for maximum performance without subjecting the rest of the bike to wear and tear on the track. When the other teams turned around and saw this strategy in action, Yamaha records, their members looked mortified.

The trick paid off at the third Mount Fuji Ascent Race, where on 10 July 1955, rider Okada Teruo took first place in the 125 cc class aboard Yamaha’s new YA-1, while six other Yamaha riders finished in the top ten. In November, at the first Asama Highlands Race, rider Hiyoshi Noboru took the top spot in the 125 cc event and was followed up by two other YA-1s, barring the competition from the podium.

At the newly established company, news of these wins gave employee morale a significant boost, and it also had a major impact upon Yamaha’s profile as a motorcycle manufacturer. Although the YA-1 was priced at ¥138,000, making it one of Japan’s most expensive 125 cc motorcycles, customers responded enthusiastically. Before it was phased out of production in 1957, the YA-1 sold over eleven thousand units. Determined to build upon its original design, in April 1956 Yamaha also released a 175 cc version called the YC-1, which made its debut at the Tokyo Motor Show in Hibiya Park. This model featured Japan’s first monobloc carburetor, meaning that the carburetor body was cast as a single piece – a design common to British motorcycles of the era.

This technique was informed by Yamaha’s significant die-casting experience and enabled by its possession of the required production equipment and development capital. In 1957, the capital stock of the Yamaha motorcycle division reached ¥100 million, and its designers issued their first 50 cc machine, the YB-1, which resembled a full-size motorcycle more closely than did similar products by Honda and Suzuki. Yamaha also issued its first two-stroke, two-cylinder, 250 cc engine in that year, fitted to a larger motorcycle named the YD-1. This model featured a full double seat for carrying a passenger comfortably, and by the time Yamaha issued its first sport model, the YDS-1, in 1959, its 250 cc engine was capable of generating 20 horsepower.

In order to keep up with the market leaders, Yamaha’s engineers were aware that they would have to perform well in international races, for before the YA-1 made its debut in 1955, Honda Soichiro had already announced his intention to win the Man TT Race. Yamaha’s race team therefore entered the Catalina Grand Prix Race in the United States in 1958, where it finished sixth overall – the best performance by a Japanese manufacturer to that point. The team took second place in the Los Angeles City Race in that year, and in 1964, English rider Phil
Read delivered Yamaha its first Grand Prix world championship aboard the company’s 250 cc RD65. Victories like these earned the company a solid reputation as one of Japan’s top three motorcycle manufacturers alongside Honda and Suzuki, and rising domestic sales were the direct result.

Whereas Yamaha’s production neared a quarter of a million units in 1960, that figure more than doubled by 1970, surpassing 574,000 units and eclipsing Suzuki’s output in the process. Yamaha’s reputation as a Grand Prix winner during the 1960s also attracted the interest of foreign consumers, and it founded the Yamaha International Corporation in 1960.



The Yamaha Motor Company was born of a clear combination of manufacturing strategy and developmental assets. The company’s formula for combining technological assets with management and engineering experience in pursuit of domestic and international racing victories was shared by Honda and Suzuki, but Yamaha skipped past the 50 cc stage and headed straight for the 125 cc market. This clever tactic was enabled by the twin luxuries of time and money, because Kawakami Genichi found himself in a very advantageous financial position in 1950. Technologically, Nippon Gakki had set its sights very high, but as a manufacturer of world-class musical instruments and of aircraft propellers, its engineers were well prepared to meet the challenge. Armed with a casting plant and with cutting machines that few of Japan’s motorcycle manufacturers could match, Nippon Gakki was able to engineer an advanced prototype in just ten months.

Kawakami’s tenure as the manager of Nippon Gakki’s Tenryu plant during the war era also provided a measure of operational experience that shop-based makers simply did not possess. It would be a gross simplification to suggest that Nippon Gakki merely bought itself a seat in the industry’s front row, but its supply of development capital set it apart from those manufacturers that were struggling in 1953 simply to pay their subcontractors. Restricted cash flow could kill even the best-prepared producers of the most popular makes.

Get Fitted Up Your Motorcycle !

Forget any idea of "one size fits all". Your bike has to fit you just right if you want to have precision control. To change down smoothly under braking, your front brake and clutch levers must be positioned right. For smooth starts and slick changes the clutch bite point needs to be set right. A badly set gear-shifter can make you wobble and your changes slow up or down the box. Little things do matter. Even two people the same size may need to set a bike differently to fit differences in arm, leg and trunk lengths as well as riding style and personal preference.

Fitted Up Your Motorcycle


Adjusting the controls "spot on" gives you optimum control with maximum comfort. Each control action does its own job without disturbing balance or weight distribution, in an emergency that can be the difference between staying in control and coming off.

So let’s look at how to do it.



Set that Front Brake




- We want instant braking

- Good "feel"

- Easy throttle blipping for smooth down changes


OK, in your normal ‘at speed’ body posture, reach out for the brake. It needs to be angled so that it "falls to hand". Try it eyes closed. If the lever is too high your wrist will bend up uncomfortably and it will be even worse as you lean back into your braking posture. If the lever is too low, it might feel OK in your sit up braking posture but it won’t fall naturally to hand at speed.

Once you have found the small range of rotation of the lever that feels right for just braking, work on braking and blipping the throttle at the same time. Most times you do this, you will be in sit up posture under firm braking, slowing for a curve, but just occasionally you will want to brake and downshift while maintaining your ‘at speed’ posture. (I find this happens when aborting a passing maneuver and getting ready for the next chance).

Riding with 2 fingers covering the brake is a recommended technique – but it may require a different setting.

Perfect blipping is most critical when under heavy braking because that’s when rear tire is lightly loaded you are most likely to break traction with a bad downshift, so bias your final setting to favor this situation.



Set the Clutch



Easier than setting the brake lever because your left hand only has one job. For me precision clutch control is most demanding when maneuvering at walking pace, so I want the angle set for that.

The other thing to adjust is the clutch biting point. Two things are important here: low speed maneuvering and quick downshifts at speed. To get quick shifts, I want the clutch disengaged with only a part squeeze on the lever, not have to pull it up to the grip. For maneuvering and stopstart city traffic, you want the ‘just engaging’ point of the travel at the most comfortable and controllable amount of squeeze. Bikes with a heavy clutch or a long, draggy action can be a pain! One thing is for sure, you’ll always ride better with your best compromise setting than the way it came. And if it is still a pain, maybe you should see if there are any upgrades or modifications available for your model.



Set the Rear Brake



If you thought adjusting hand controls was fiddly, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

The rear brake is the third control that needs ‘feel’ and feedback to the rider. Motorcycles vary in the pedal pressure and travel that’s needed. You only need enough pressure to squeal, not lock(!), the rear tire at 70mph. The brake may be capable of more than this but you won’t ever be able to use it, even with a failed front brake. If you have the confidence and control to rear tire squeal from 70mph down to 20mph, I congratulate you. You truly are a rear brake maestro. If not, please don’t start practising at 70 mph unless you are feeling suicidal!

Unless you are a maestro already, set your brake for maximum comfort and control when using it fairly gently for low speed work and slippery conditions.

The correct way to make adjustments may not be obvious, check out the manufacturer’s instructions in the manual. Make adjustments a little at a time. Remember that a pedal set too low could reduce ground clearance and the available lean angle. Look what other settings (peg position for example) are available on your model.



Set the Gear Shift



There is probably more variation in travel, weight, feel, crispness and adjustment in gearshifts than in any other motorcycle control. Just be glad you are not forced to use hand gear selection that was popular in the old days. Read the manual to see how to make adjustments. Aim to be able to make quick, clean shifts both up and down without repositioning your foot or straining your ankle. Be aware of possible ground clearance issues.

When you reckon you have got the right setting just do a quick check to make sure selecting first at standstill with your other foot down still feels OK. This move is different because you are unbalanced and out of the normal body position. Sports bikes can be a bit awkward and tiring to ride in the city unless you get it right.

I hope you have got your bike set up to suit you now. I promise it will make a major improvement to your comfort and control. As you get familiar with the new feel, give yourself a little time to settle in, but don’t be afraid to make further minor adjustments that get the total package working in harmony.

Setting the bike for precision control is groundwork advanced riding.

MV Agusta Bialbero 500-6, Italian Madness !

If we talk about the 6-cylinder engine in the World Grand Prix (MotoGP) event, then Surely our minds will be on the legendary 250cc Honda RC166 or 350cc RC174 with "madness" specifications, as well as a record of his remarkable victory. However, there is other Inline-Six figure that equally phenomenal, and one of them is the MV Agusta 500-6 Bialbero !




MV Agusta 500-6 or often referred to as MV Agusta Bialbero, is one of the MV Agusta Grand Prix Motorcycle that was first introduced in 1957 ago, in the Grand Prix of Nations series Monza Circuit, Italy, which also became the headquarters of this manufacturer.

MV Agusta 6-cylinder engine is a "proof" of a Count Domenico Agusta (Founder MV Agusta), who did not want to lose fame by high-specs bike such as Gilera Rondine-Four & MotoGuzzi Ottocilindri V8... So, They began a large grandprix development in 1956 ago, and the results were introduced at the end of 1957 GP series.



If you all thought that the Honda RC166 & RC174 is the first 6-Cylinder Motorcycle at the Grand Prix event, then it is totally wrong ! MV Agusta Bialbero 500-6 comes first decade earlier (1957) than those two Honda's ! In fact, This Parallel 6-Cylinder engine Motor comes before the glory era of the legendary MV Agusta bike, MV Agusta 500-3, along with super legendary riders such as John Surtees, Mike Hailwood & Giacomo Agostini.


In the design & detail sector, MV Agusta Bialbero 500-6 did not look too different from the other 50's GP bikes. This GP machine is equipped with Dustbin fairing which seems ridiculous, and totally old school, just like MotoGuzzi V8 which will be discuss later. Meanwhile, details are also no less old school. Although armed with six-cylinder 500cc engine, but is still equipped with MV Agusta big Drum Brakes, front - back Telescopic Suspension, as well as Double-Cradle Frame Model.


Looking closely behind the "eccentric" fairing , That's what we looking for this bike ... Yes, as the name suggests, MV Agusta 500-6 equipped with 4-Stroke, 498cc, Inline-Six, DOHC 12-Valves, with traditional engine cooling - Air Cooled. Though still visibly inferior to MotoGuzzi V8 that carries 8-Cylinder plus Liquid-cooling, but it turns out that the motor power is not less flashy !

Yeah, MV Agusta 500-6 Bialbero claimed capable of spewing power of 70 HP @ 15,000 RPM ! A very surprising power output result for the motorcycle that comes almost 6 decades ago.

And This is the Completely Specifications of  MV Agusta 500-6 Bialbero :


Manufacturer : MV Agusta Motor SpA

Model : 500-6 (Bialbero 500-6C)

Year : 1957 - 1959

Class : WorldGP


Engine : 4-Stroke, Inline-Six, DOHC 12-Valve (2 Valves per cylinder), Air Cooled, Gear-Driven Camshaft

Bore x Stroke : 48 x 46 mm

Cylinder capacity : 498 cc

Compression ratio : 10.8: 1

Fuel Supply  : 6 x Carburetor Dell'Orto SS26A

Transmission : 6-Speed

Maximum Power : 70 HP @ 15,000 RPM

Top Speed : 240 Km / h (GP Monza, Italy)


Dimensions L x W x H: 1,950 x 530 x - mm

Wheelbase : 1,310 mm

Fuel tank capacity : 22 Liter

Dry weight : 145 kg


Frame : Steel - Double Cradle Frame

Front Brakes : Drum Brake

Rear brakes: Drum Brake

Front tires: 3.00 - 18 Inch

Rear tires: 3.50 - 18 Inch

Buying Your First Motorcycle : Minimizing Maintenance Costs

Your choice of a bike can determine how much maintenance you’ll need to do. Sometimes engineers design motorcycles with certain high-maintenance features to increase the performance of a bike, but more often than not, features that make a motorcycle easier (and cheaper) to maintain are excluded just to save production costs.

BMW R1200GS Motorcycle Maintenance Costs


If you’re after extremely high performance, you’ll have to accept the fact that you’ll have to spend more money on maintenance, but if you’re willing to accept a slightly lower level of performance, there are features you can look for and riding habits you can practice that will help you keep maintenance costs down.

Three elements in particular will affect your maintenance costs : the shaft drive, the centerstand, and the valves.


Read More : Buying Your First Motorcycle : Where to Buy Your Bike ?


Getting Shafted



Select a bike with a shaft drive. Chain maintenance is the most frequent procedure you’ll need to perform on your bike. It’s also the dirtiest.

Sporty bikes will usually have a chain, since chains tend to disrupt handling less than shafts. If you want such a bike, you’ll usually have to accept a chain as part of the package. But there has been a trend in recent years to use chains on types of bikes that, by nature, aren’t the best in handling, such as mid-sized cruisers. This is purely a cost-cutting measure on the part of the manufacturers. If you want to buy a mid-sized Japanese cruiser, my advice is to get an older, used one, since these usually have shaft drives.

Another option is to select a bike with a belt-drive system. These can be a good compromise between the handling benefits of a chain and the maintenance benefits of a shaft. Belt-drive systems, like the one used by Harley-Davidson, require less maintenance than chains, but more than shafts. The main drawback of Harley’s belt-drive system is that fixing one can be an expensive proposition.


Read More : Buying Your First Motorcycle : What to Look For ?


The Benefits of a Centerstand




Make certain your bike comes equipped with a centerstand. Until recently, all Japanese bikes came with centerstands - it was one of the things that set them apart from Harley-Davidsons, which have never been equipped with modern centerstands.

In the 1980s, Japanese manufacturers began excluding centerstands from ultra-highperformance sportbikes, because the designs of the exhaust systems used in those bikes prohibited the mounting of centerstands, and also because centerstands hindered cornering clearance.

But in the past few years, they’ve also begun excluding them from bikes that already have limited cornering clearance, like cruisers. This is another cost-cutting measure. Combine lack of a centerstand with a chain drive, and I guarantee you will create new expletives while maintaining your bike.


Read More : Buying Your First Motorcycle : What’s It Worth ?


Hydraulically Adjusted Valves




One of the costliest aspects of maintaining a motorcycle is adjusting the amount the valves move up and down.

This is a critical (and often neglected) part of motorcycle maintenance, because if the valve doesn’t move down far enough during the combustion cycle, it can get bent and destroy the valve train. If the valve moves down too far, it can hit the top of the piston, destroying the entire top end.

It is also an expensive part of motorcycle maintenance. On most modern motorcycles, valve adjustment is too complex a job for an inexperienced mechanic to tackle alone. Most riders take their bikes into shops to have the procedure performed. If the motorcycle has any body work which the mechanic has to remove to gain access to the valves, or if the motorcycle is constructed in a way that requires the mechanic to go to heroic lengths to gain access to the valves, the mechanic will also have to spend even more time adjusting the valves.

And to a mechanic, time is money. Shops often charge $50 per hour for a mechanic’s time. On a multi-cylinder bike with body work, a mechanic can take several hours to adjust the valves. Valve adjustments seldom cost less then $100, and on certain complex machines, can run as high as $250. Remember, this is a procedure you’ll have to have performed at least once every year (even more, if you ride a lot). But there is a way to avoid this expensive bit of maintenance. Back in the early 1980s, Honda introduced several motorcycle models that had overhead-cam engines with hydraulically adjusted valves. Suzuki and Kawasaki followed suit, introducing cruisers with similar systems. All new Harleys come with hydraulically adjusted valves.

While such systems slightly limited the performance of the motorcycles using them, they also completely eliminated the costs associated with valve adjustments. And for most motorcyclists, the performance limitations of hydraulically operated valves were academic, coming into play only at extremely high RPMs. In the real world, motorcyclists seldom ride at such extreme speeds. If at all possible, select a bike with maintenancefree, hydraulically adjusted valves. This will decrease performance a bit, but that will only be an issue on bikes that demand ultrahigh performance. On cruisers and standards, the difference won’t be noticeable, and you’ll save hundreds of dollars each year on maintenance costs.

Honda CBX 1000, One of Soichiro Honda's Masterpieces

Honda CBX 1000 6 Cylinder was a Legendary Bike from the Big Japanese firm. First introduced in 1978 and then, discontinue in 1982. This classic japanese motorcycles was developed when four Japanese manufacturers are competing to create the Superbike that is really "Superclass Bike".



At that time, as chairman, Soichiro Honda, Decides to select the Parallel-Inline 6 cylinder engine, which will be used in the CBX - compared with other options namely Inline 4-cylinder 1000cc or 1200cc. Soichiro actually is already familiar with a 6 cylinder engine. At the 60's, He also had to make a far more devastating masterpiece, Honda RC166 250cc six-cylinder, that once drove Mike "The Bike" Hailwood became 250cc World Champion.


But apparently, the CBX development is not without obstacles. The most confusing for Soichiro Honda is how to put the 1047cc six cylinder inline engine with a width of almost 60 cm to CBX Frame, plus Reduces the jarring sound from very powerful machine, without having to sacrifice comfort and rider's satisfaction.

Finally, with minimizing Crankcase Engineering, Stretches fuel tank design, exhaust & Placement dispensing cylinder block made tilted forward 30 degrees, Make CBX finally ready for launch !

In the Design & Detail, Honda put the various Regulatory Electrical and Ignition reversed / behind the machine to keep reducing the size of the width of the CBX - that is always be a major issue. CBX1000 use the high quality Chromoly Diamond-Frame. In the frame itself, there are 8 Mounting to the engine - 4 on Cylinder Head & 4 other at Gearbox Crankcase.

CBX 1000 using 35mm Telescopic front suspension and Double-Shockbreaker rear suspension - until the third version in 1981, the suspension changed by Pro-Link monoshock the rear.


More about the CBX, This masterpiece is equipped with Parallel-Inline 6 cylinder 1047cc engine, DOHC 24-Valve, 5-Speed Transmission, and also 6 Barrel Keihin VB28mm Carburetors. With a compression ratio of 9.3: 1, Maximum power CBX 1000 reaches 103 HP and accelerates 402 m in a time of 11.6 seconds with a maximum speed of 189 Km/h (118 mph). Real Top Speed of the CBX reaching 216 Km/h (135mph) !

No wonder then, Honda claimed CBX 1000 is Fastest, High-Tech, Futuristic & Most Powerful Motorcycle in his era.

And Here is Complete Specifications of Honda CBX1000 :

Manufacturer : Honda Motor Company
Model : CBX1000
Year : 1978 - 1982

Engine : 4-Stroke, Air Cooled, Inline 6 cylinder, DOHC, 24-Valve
Bore x Stroke : 64.5 x 53.4 mm
Cylinder capacity : 1.047 cc
Compression Ratio : 9.3: 1
Fuel supplies : 6 x Carburetor Keihin VB28
Maximum Power : 103 HP @ 9000 rpm
Maximum Torque: 85 N.m @ 8000 rpm
Transmission : 5-Speed
Top Speed : 215 Km/h (135 mph)

Frame : Chromoly Steel - Diamond Frame
Front Suspension : 35mm Telescopic Fork
Rear Suspension : (1978 - '80) FVQ Dual Shockbreaker, (1981 - '82) Pro-Link monoshock
Brakes Front : Dual 276mm Disc
Brakes Rear : Single 296mm Disc
Front tires : 3.50 - 19
Rear tires : 4:25 - 19
Fuel tank capacity : 20 Liter
Empty weight: 249 kg

The Complete History of Kawasaki Motorcycles

Kawasaki Motors was the last of the surviving Big Four manufacturers to enter Japan’s motorcycle business, although like its wartime peers Fuji and Mitsubishi it did make an aborted foray into scooter manufacturing during the early 1950s. Details about the vast and diverse Kawasaki Heavy Industries Corporation could fill several volumes, and while Kawasaki documents many of its manufacturing divisions extensively, it dedicates just three pages of its 1997 published history to its motorcycle operations.

Kawasaki Motorcycle History Ninja ZX-14R


This is perhaps appropriate because Kawasaki Motors makes up only a fraction of this vast corporation’s global operations, but it is undoubtedly the conglomerate’s most recognized division. Kawasaki does, however, document the origins of the motorcycle division’s parent firm, the Kawasaki Aircraft Company, in detail in a separate volume. This source illustrates the aircraft manufacturer’s steady growth during the transwar era and leaves little doubt as to the extent of the firm’s technological capabilities.


A late entrant to the motorcycle market, Kawasaki’s rapid success in the field stemmed from a long history of engine and turbine design and manufacturing. In April 1876, Kawasaki Shozo (born 10 August 1837) established the Kawasaki Tsukiji Shipyard alongside the Sumida River in Chuo ward, Tokyo, with the support of Prince Matsukata Masayoshi (1835-1924), who was then Japan’s vice minister of finance. When the first Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1894, the company received extensive orders for ship repairs.

Immediately after the war’s end in 1895, Kawasaki decided to take the company public, and in 1896 the firm was incorporated as the Kawasaki Dockyard Company. As Kawasaki Shozo approached sixty years of age without a son old enough to succeed him, he chose Matsukata Kojiro (1865-1950) to lead the company into the next era. Kojiro, Matsukata Masayoshi’s third son, served as the president of Kawasaki Dockyard for thirty-two years, from 1892 to 1928. During that time, the firm diversified its interests broadly, expanding into shipping and the manufacture of steam turbines, submarines, locomotives, rolling stock, and, of course, aircraft.




As Kawasaki grew, its principal divisions were spun off into separate entities (look at the figure above). The first to branch off was its marine freight department, Kawasaki Steamship Lines, or K-line, which was incorporated in 1919. In 1928, the company’s Hyogo works was incorporated separately as Kawasaki Rolling Stock Manufacturing Company. Kawasaki’s aircraft department had been established in this manufacturing plant in 1918, but in 1922 a new plant for aircraft construction was established at Sohara (today Kakamigahara City) in Gifu prefecture.

Here it began producing its first surveillance biplane, the Type Otsu 1, for Japan’s military. Kawasaki built roughly three hundred of these aircraft over the next five years. The aircraft department was spun off in 1937 as the Kawasaki Aircraft Company Limited. In 1938, the year after Japan’s invasion of China, Kawasaki sought to expand its operations at Gifu, but there was insufficient space to construct additional manufacturing and aircraft testing facilities. Consequently, the Imperial Japanese Army encouraged Kawasaki to construct a new plant just west of Akashi City in Hyogo prefecture, where there was enough land available (1.8 square kilometres, or 0.7 square miles) to build both a new factory and a pilot training ground. Kawasaki then moved its existing Kobe Motors plant to Akashi, where Kawasaki’s motorcycle production later began.


Kawasaki Aircraft designed and built a series of fighter and escort aircraft for Japan’s military until the end of the Second World War. Its products included a long-range escort and ground attack aircraft called the Ki-45 Toryu¯, or "Dragon Slayer," which emerged in September 1941 and was dubbed "Nick" by the Allies. The frame was designed and manufactured by Kawasaki, but it featured a pair of air-cooled, fourteen-cylinder, radial piston engines designed by Mitsubishi Aircraft. From 1941, Kawasaki also produced its own engine through a licensing arrangement with Daimler-Benz. Known as the Ki-61 Hien, or "Flying Swallow" (and called "Tony" by the Allies), this aircraft was based upon the Messerschmitt Aircraft Company’s Me109 and Me210 designs, all the parts for which were purchased from Germany by Japan’s army in June 1941 and January 1943, respectively.

The aircraft were disassembled and shipped to Japan aboard German navy submarines, and the engineers at Kawasaki Aircraft studied, sketched, and assembled each of the fighters over three-month periods. The engineers found the German designs and production methods highly innovative, but Kawasaki’s test pilots did not consider their performance in the air especially remarkable. Nevertheless, the engine casting plant at Akashi reproduced the Daimler-Benz engine, known as the DB 601-A, which was an inverted, liquid-cooled, V-12 cylinder machine. The resulting Kawasaki powerplant, designated the Ha-40, produced 1,175 horsepower and was the only liquid-cooled fighter engine manufactured in Japan during the war. Not limited to merely copying the Daimler-Benz engine, Kawasaki’s engineers later produced an improved version known as the Ha-140 that produced 1,450 horsepower.

Known to the army as simply the Type-3 fighter, the Ki-61 had its first flight in December 1941 and saw combat for the first time in the spring of 1943 during Japan’s campaign in New Guinea. Over 2,600 units were issued during its production run, and it later served as a defence against US B-29s, although too few remained by 1945 to be a significant deterrent to American air raids. In January 1945, Kawasaki was working on two versions of an updated model called the Ki-61-II, but only ninety-nine were completed before the firm’s engine plant was bombed on 19 January.

In an effort to make use of 275 remaining airframes, Kawasaki’s engineers substituted the Mitsubishi Ha-112-II radial piston engine for the usual V-12 powerplant and issued what it called the Ki-100 fighter. Although this turned out to be a tremendous design that performed exceptionally well against US fighters, too few were produced to be effective against the American advance. Production continued until the company’s operations at Hyogo were bombed by thirty B-29s on 22 June 1945 and again by ninety planes on 26 June, resulting in the destruction of Kawasaki’s engine and assembly plants.



By the time Japan surrendered on 15 August, Kawasaki records that it had designed, tested, and built roughly 11,600 aircraft. Crippling material shortages notwithstanding, the firm contends that its designs remained competitive and that its technical skill was closing in on international standards. With the end of the war, operations were idled until GHQ had assessed Japan’s industrial base and issued its ruling on which plants were to continue peacetime production and which were to be terminated. GHQ banned all aircraft design, testing, and production in the late summer of 1945.

For Kawasaki Aircraft, this directive meant that its bombed-out plants would have to convert, at least temporarily, to the production of other goods. This familiar pattern parallels the experiences of the Suzuki Automatic Loom Company, Nippon Gakki, and the Mitsubishi and Fuji aircraft companies. Early after the war, Kawasaki made arrangements to produce such items as firefighting equipment, duralumin suitcases, electric kettles, radio cabinets, typewriters, farm implements, and small engines. As a former manufacturer of its own V-12 aircraft engines, Kawasaki’s engineers were a uniquely skilled group, but the production of small engines for agricultural use was a significant shift in both purpose and scale. Combined with the difficulty in procuring production material, the Akashi works struggled to stay busy while General Douglas MacArthur and his staff considered its future.

In 1946, GHQ’s strict ban on aircraft production was relaxed, and on 12 June it announced that its total prohibition was “deleted” and replaced by the following order:

" You will permit no individual or group under your jurisdiction to develop or execute plans for the design, manufacture, procurement or operation of any aircraft, components or devices designed therefor; or for procurement outside of Japan of such services, except as specifically authorized by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers."

This new policy permitted some leeway, and as Kawasaki awaited the opportunity to again manufacture aircraft, its Gifu plant began manufacturing bus and truck bodies as a subcontractor for the Isuzu Motor Company. At this time, Kawasaki Aircraft had three divisions: Kawasaki Aircraft, in Akashi, Hyogo prefecture; Kawasaki Gifu Manufacturing, in Sohara, Gifu prefecture; and Kawasaki Machine Industries, in Takatsuki City, Osaka prefecture. Although Japan’s aircraft industry remained idle until the Treaty of Peace with Japan came into effect in March 1952, former military aircraft producers were called upon to service and repair US aircraft following the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950.

This seven-year delay was a difficult obstacle to overcome, but Kawasaki had been able to maintain a baseline of technical skills and equipment through its interim role as a service subcontractor for the Douglas Aircraft Company of the United States. After aircraft production resumed, Kawasaki began developing the KAL-1 transport plane at its Gifu plant, while its Akashi works focused on the development of helicopters based on an agreement signed in 1952 with the Bell Aircraft Corporation of the United States. In 1954, Kawasaki produced six Kawasaki-Bell 47D-1 helicopters – the first helicopters built in Japan – for the nation’s Ground Self-Defense Forces.



At the end of the 1940s, meanwhile, Kawasaki’s management began laying the groundwork for its foray into motorcycle production. In 1949, aircraft engineers at the Kawasaki Machine Industries plant in Takatsuki began designing the company’s first motorcycle engine, an air-cooled, four-stroke, one-cylinder, overhead-valve, 148 cc machine, which they dubbed the KE, for "Kawasaki Engine." The prototype was completed in 1952, and Kawasaki began manufacturing the design in 1953.

For that purpose, Kawasaki established a subsidiary called Meihatsu Industries to oversee the production and distribution of a scooter equivalent to the Rabbit and Silver Pigeon scooters then being produced by Fuji and Mitsubishi, respectively.121 Kawasaki Machine Industries manufactured the engine in Takatsuki, and the Kawasaki automotive plant at Sohara, Gifu (which continued to build bus bodies for Isuzu) began building scooters with the KE motor in October 1953. Although the new Kawasaki brand scooter was priced competitively at ¥90,000, the company had no effective domestic sales network and therefore discontinued production after completing just two hundred units. As a munitions corporation, its principal customers had theretofore been Japan’s government, major rail companies, the army, the navy, GHQ, Douglas Aircraft, and Bell Helicopter, so Kawasaki did not have a great deal of consumer product sales or marketing experience. Though a skilled manufacturer, Kawasaki had not considered the challenges of bringing its new scooter to market, and the product was a failure.

In February 1954, the Kawasaki Aircraft and Kawasaki Machine Industries divisions merged, and, spotting another opportunity in a converging market, the company’s head office decided in July to enter the motorcycle industry. Under the joint company name of Kawasaki-Meihatsu, the parent company and its subsidiary worked together and followed Yamaha’s lead by developing a 125 cc engine called the KB-5 at the Kawasaki Aircraft plant in Kobe in 1955. At this point, Kawasaki designed and manufactured the engines, and the finished motorcycles were named Meihatsu. The KB-5 engine was installed in the Meihatsu brand 125-500 motorcycle in that year, and customers were pleased by the responsive torque that it produced at low and mid-range rpm.

The same engine was also installed in the Meihatsu 125 Deluxe, which debuted in 1956, and Kawasaki produced a modified version of the engine, called the KB-5A, in 1957. The 125 Deluxe was well received by industry writers, who reported that it reached a top speed of 81.5 km/h (51 mph), and it also completed a 50,000-km (30,068-mile) endurance test without breaking down. Kawasaki-Meihatsu also supplied engines to a variety of contemporary "assembly makers" throughout Japan, such as the Ito Motor Company and the Rocket Company. The latter company, however, judged Kawasaki’s engine too expensive and discontinued its use in the Queen Rocket motorcycle.

By 1959, the company was pleased with the performance of its Kawasaki-Meihatsu motorcycle division, and, like the three companies profiled above, Kawasaki determined that in order to compete effectively, a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant was required. The firm therefore erected a factory at 1-1 Kawasaki-cho, in Akashi, Hyogo prefecture, dedicated to production of complete motorcycles bearing only the name Kawasaki. Construction of the plant began in January 1960, and mass production of the 125 cc Kawasaki New Ace commenced in November of that year. At the Japan Auto Show in October 1960, Kawasaki displayed its newest 125 cc designs for the 1961 model year, the Pet M5 and the B7.

The Pet M5 was styled as a utility motorcycle, but because it boasted Kawasaki’s 125 cc engine, it appealed to firms in Japan’s service industry that wanted more power than Honda’s 50 cc Super Cub could offer. These new products sold well: production rose sharply from 5,400 machines in 1960 to 17,000 in the following year. The former subsidiary Meihatsu Industries, meanwhile, was absorbed by its parent in 1961 and converted into Kawasaki’s sales division under the name Kawasaki Auto Sales.

Kawasaki’s attention turned in 1960 to the troubled Meguro Manufacturing. Meguro was then Japan’s longest-running motorcycle maker, and it had remained one of the industry’s leading firms until the late 1950s. A manufacturing veteran, Meguro had issued its first four-stroke, 500 cc engine in 1937. By the mid-1950s, the styling of its motorcycles bore a strong British influence that was popular with consumers, but when Meguro’s designers tried to update their image in 1958, consumers deemed the new 125 cc, 250 cc, and 350 cc products too heavy, and sales were dismal. Its designers also tried to produce a 50 cc moped, but consumers found it too expensive, and the project was a failure.

In 1960, Meguro agreed to enter into a development partnership with Kawasaki, whose engineers learned a great deal about building four-stroke engines from the senior manufacturer. In 1962, Kawasaki released the first motorcycle both designed and built by its own engineers, the 125 cc B8, which performed well in the market. Kawasaki was the financially dominant partner in the relationship with Meguro, and having learned what it needed to know, it absorbed the elder firm formally in October 1964.


Like the industry’s leading firms, Kawasaki understood that in order to be taken seriously as a manufacturer it had to perform well in races. Well aware that Honda, Suzuki, and Yamaha were several laps ahead on the world Grand Prix circuit, Kawasaki decided to focus first on motocross racing, which was growing especially popular in western Japan at that time. In 1963, the company’s designers issued the B8M, a motocross model with a distinctive red fuel tank, and with it Kawasaki’s riders took the top six positions at that year’s Hyogo Prefecture Motocross Tournament. Despite its recent arrival to the sport, Kawasaki went on to win most of the motocross races in western Japan that year, including every event at the Fukui Prefecture Motocross Tournament, prompting the media to dub the Kawasaki racing sensation the "Red Tank Furor." Kawasaki’s dealers rode the wave of media attention, and the company’s reputation continued to hit new highs as it performed well in international races throughout the 1960s.

In parallel, export sales had begun in 1960 and were supported by Kawasaki’s reputation for designing larger, faster motorcycles than its competitors The company’s product development engineers broke new ground in 1965 by designing Kawasaki’s first 650 cc motorcycle, the W1. Powered by an air-cooled, two-stroke, parallel twin-cylinder engine featuring rotary disk valves, the W1 was aimed at both Japanese and Western consumers. Its styling owed much to the machines once produced by former partner Meguro, which had closely resembled British makes. The W1 marked Kawasaki’s arrival in the United States as a “big bike” maker.

Thereafter, steady progress in international racing improved Kawasaki’s position as a world-class competitor and manufacturer. In 1966, Kawasaki’s first 125 cc Grand Prix racing machine, the KAC Special, took seventh and eighth places in the final race of the FIM (Fédération internationale de motocyclisme) World Championship. In the same year, its 250 cc A1R racing model finished second in the All-Japan Championship. At the Singapore Grand Prix race in 1967, Kawasaki entered the 350 cc class race with its A7R and took both first and second places, while the 250 cc A1R finished second and third. Determined to improve its standing in 125 cc class races, Kawasaki also developed a new machine for the Japan round of the 1967 FIM World Championship. Known as the KA-2, it boasted a liquid-cooled, V-4, 124 cc engine, and with it Kawasaki’s race team took third and fourth places.

In 1968, the company issued a three-cylinder, 500 cc production model known overseas as the H1 (and domestically as the 500SS Mach III) that could reach 200 km/h (124 mph), prompting significant safety concerns throughout Japan. In 1969, Kawasaki rider Dave Simmonds at last scored victories in both the West German Grand Prix and the Isle of Mann TT Race, winning that year’s overall championship series atop his KR1. Although several years behind its principal rivals, Kawasaki had finally arrived at the podium to confirm its status as one of Japan’s Big Four manufacturers.

In 1970, just a year after Kawasaki’s three machinery divisions merged to form Kawasaki Heavy Industries, annual motorcycle production neared 150,000 units. In 1972, Kawasaki bid to out-gun its leading rival, Honda, by producing Japan’s largest postwar export motorcycle to date – a 900 cc machine named the Z1. Nicknamed “New York Steak” during its five-year development program, the Z1 was powered by the world’s first air-cooled, in-line four-cylinder engine, which boasted dual overhead camshafts. The bold marketing strategy behind the Z1 was met with enthusiasm by consumers, and it enjoyed strong reviews and sales.

In Japan, the domestic Z2 was released in 1973 with only 750 cc and also enjoyed widespread popularity, but the overseas success of the Z1 kept Kawasaki on top as the maker of Japan’s largest production motorcycle for much of the decade. Honda did not begin issuing 900 cc machines until the late 1970s.

Having set its sights on the motorcycle market, Kawasaki was clearly a powerful competitor. The wartime experience earned while producing the Daimler-Benz 601-A aircraft engine was its principal technological advantage over firms that had produced nothing but motorcycles for the last four decades. Furthermore, its determined investment in a brand-new, fully automated manufacturing plant set the stage for its late-entry bid for market share. Timing, in this case, was critical, for the vast majority of makers had already departed from the industry when Kawasaki built its dedicated motorcycle manufacturing plant at Akashi in 1960. Armed with products designed and built by Kawasaki Aircraft and fuelled by international racing victories, Kawasaki Motors was well positioned to move into the motorcycle market of the 1960s, and the firm capitalized fully on its financial advantage over even the most veteran manufacturers.

Buying Your First Motorcycle : What’s It Worth ?

You’ve found the bike of your dreams, it’s mechanically and cosmetically perfect, and you already have visions of yourself roaming the highways on the beast. Now you have to figure out how much the bike is worth.

Yamaha YZF R1 Used


There’s not much to negotiating the price of a new bike. Your best bet is to call every dealer within reasonable driving distance (remember, you will probably have to return to that dealer for warranty work) and find out what each one is charging for the model you’re interested in. Once you have the best price, you might want to go to the nearest dealer you trust and give them an opportunity to match it. Even if they can’t match it exactly, if they can even come close, it might be worth a few extra dollars to buy from someone you trust, someone who is located nearby.


When shopping for a new motorcycle, you can save a lot of money by remaining flexible about which make and model to buy. Say you’ve decided to purchase a midsized cruiser, like Kawasaki’s Vulcan 800 Classic. While searching for such a bike, you find a decade-old Honda 800 Shadow in mint condition at one-third the price of the Kawasaki.

While the Kawasaki is a fine motorcycle, the Shadow is capable of providing every bit as much enjoyment, and with its shaft drive and hydraulically-adjusted valves, the Honda will save you hundreds of dollars per year in maintenance costs over the Kawasaki. You can pocket the money saved and use it to finance a cross-country motorcycle trip.

You can also save a lot of money by watching for carryover models. While shopping for the best deal on a Honda 750 Shadow, you might run across a brand-new last year’s model Kawasaki 800 Vulcan for $1,500 less. In this case, maintenance costs will be roughly equal, since both bikes have manually adjusted valves and chain drives, so if you keep an open mind, that will be an extra $1,500 in your pocket.

Buying a used bike is where the process most diverges from buying a car. Because motorcycle prices can fluctuate widely from region to region, depending on how large a market an area has, accurate price guides are difficult to compile.

Further complicating the creation of useful price guides is the wide variation in the condition of each motorcycle. One seller’s Yamaha 1100 Special can be in mint condition at 60,000 miles, while the next guy’s can be a hunk of junk at 10,000 miles. When deciding how much a bike is worth, a guidebook’s value assessment is only part of the equation. In addition to things such as condition and completeness, you have to look at routine wear and tear. Keeping a motorcycle in tip-top running condition is an expensive proposition. A bike with a fresh tune-up is definitely worth more than a bike needing a tune-up.

Another item that increases a bike’s value is fresh tires. You should be able to tell by looking whether the tires have low miles: Check the depth of the tread at the edges of the tire compared to the depth of the tread at the center. A good pair of quality tires can run you well over $300, with mounting and balancing, so factor that into your price determination.

On the other hand, new tires of low quality actually detract from the value of a bike, at least in my personal equation. If a bike has a pair of bargain-brand tires, I have to either make the decision to drive on tires I consider unsafe, or toss out a nearly new set of tires and spend $300 on another pair. If a bike is wearing a pair of budget-brand tires, I automatically deduct $250 from my offer.

It’s a good idea to speak with as many other owners of a certain model as you can before making a purchase (here again, belonging to a club can be beneficial). Also, check any service bulletins that may have been issued to your dealer on a certain model before buying that model.

These rough guidelines may help, but in the end, it’s just going to be you and the seller. The entire process may boil down to how badly you want to buy the bike or how much the owner wants to sell it. One thing I can guarantee: If you buy the motorcycle that’s right for you, one or two years from now, as you’re riding down the road enjoying your machine, you will not be thinking, “Damn, I paid too much for this thing.

Why We Choose Street Standards : Street Bikes ?

Because Japanese motorcycles were so influential to motorcyclists who entered the sport in the 1960s and 1970s, the look of these bikes became imprinted in our psyches as the way a motorcycle should look.

These were pretty basic bikes : Back then, function dictated form. The gas tank sat above the engine to allow the gas to run down into the carburetors. The way the human body bends pretty much dictated the placement of the rest of the parts.

Cagiva Raptor 650 - Street Bikes


As motorcycles became more specialized in the 1980s, the look of motorcycles changed. Motorcyclists were so excited by new developments that we didn’t realize we were losing something in the process. Then one day in the late 1980s, we realized that the basic bike no longer existed. Motorcyclists began complaining about this situation, and soon the Japanese designed bikes that embodied the virtues of those older models.


Unfortunately, while the inclusion of the older styling features contributed to a retro look for these new machines, it also detracted from their overall versatility. Suzuki and Kawasaki were the first to come to the market with standard motorcycles. Kawasaki’s entrance into this new/old market segment was the Zephyr 550, a four-cylinder UJM-type bike introduced for the 1990 model year. The bike did not sell well in the United States. Very few of these machines found their way to the public highways, and they were soon dropped from Kawasaki’s lineup.

Suzuki’s entrant, the VX800 of the same year, did slightly better in the market. This was a full-sized, competent machine that fulfilled the promise of the versatile standard. In fact, it is a bike I highly recommend, whether to a beginner or a long-time motorcyclist. But it was never a sales dynamo and was imported to U.S. shores for only four years.

Neither Kawasaki nor Suzuki gave up on the concept of standard bikes after the lukewarm reception of their initial efforts. Kawasaki imported increasingly larger Zephyrs, but they came with increasingly larger price tags. None of the Zephyr series offered anything a rider couldn’t find in a used GPz 900 Ninja—and for a fraction of the Zephyr’s price.

Suzuki, in an attempt to recapture the sales success it had enjoyed with its big GS series of the 1970s and 1980s, brought out the GSX1100G, a big, 1980s-style standard with a modern, single-shock rear suspension. On paper, the Suzuki fulfilled every requirement those clamoring for standard bikes claimed to need from a bike.

But the GSX was even less successful than the VX. The reason probably involved the bike’s appearance. At the risk of offending loyal GSX riders, many people considered the bike to be goofy-looking. One magazine wag even suggested they take the coloring crayon away from the designer who conceived the machine. (For the record, I kind of like the bike’s look, if you get rid of the screwy high-rise handlebars and clean up the busy-looking front end.)


Honda CB750 Nighthawk


Honda was the first Japanese manufacturer to find relative success in the standard bike market, with its Nighthawk CB750. Here was a bike that offered the versatility UJMs were known for and looked good doing it. Perhaps the factor that contributed most to the bike’s success was its low price. In this case, you really did get your money’s worth. These were, and still are, great values for the money. My wife bought one of these bikes as her first full-sized motorcycle, and one of my greatest regrets is selling that bike.

While the Nighthawk was the first modern Japanese standard to hold its own in the marketplace, it never set any kind of sales records. It seemed the standard might once again disappear from the market, had a couple of manufacturers not rethought the concept.

First Yamaha introduced the Seca II 600. At first glance, this nimble, fun bike might not be considered a standard, since it included a small, framemounted fairing (a device that protects riders from the elements).

But riders didn’t care; the fairing just added to the bike’s practicality. It seemed that being naked (without fairing) was not a prerequisite for a standard. Suzuki also realized this and brought out its Bandit series. These bikes are comfortable motorcycles that incorporate the best technology available, a useful fairing, and a reasonable price.

The success of the Bandit spawned a resurgence in this type of motorcycle. Kawasaki was first to respond, introducing its ZRX1100, a bike that earned the nickname "Eddie Lawson Replica" because it used a paint scheme reminiscent of the bikes Eddie Lawson campaigned in AMA Superbike racing in the early 1980s. Suzuki fought back with a dramatically improved version of its Bandits, in both 600cc and 1200cc forms, and Yamaha entered the standard wars with its FZ1 (Fazer outside the United States). This bike uses the potent engine from Yamaha’s R1 open class sportbike, mounted in a steel frame with an upright riding position. Yamaha marketed this bike as "An R1 for the real world."

To drive home which bike Yamaha was targeting with the FZ1, it used Eddie Lawson himself in the television ads, because Lawson had achieved his greatest racing success at the international level aboard Yamaha motorcycles. Kawasaki didn’t take this lying down, and introduced a new bike for 2001, the ZRX1200, which was much better in every respect than the original ZRX1100. Finally Honda entered the market with a standard bike based on its CBR900RR (Fireblade outside the United States).

The fierce competition in this category indicates that there is a strong market for standard-style streetbikes. If you’re a fan of these types of bikes (which I am), this is a great time to be a motorcyclist.

Why We Choose The Ultimate Behemoths: Touring Bikes ?

Another category of specialized motorcycle to appear over the last several decades is the purpose-built touring bike, a bike equipped for longer rides on the road.

Harley started this trend by offering a fairing and luggage as optional equipment on its Electra Glide back in the 1960s, but other companies were slow to pick up on the trend.

Touring Bikes - Honda Gold wing



In the late 1970s, BMW introduced its first factory dresser (the preferred name for a touring bike), the R100RT, a bike that met with market success. Honda had been producing a bike specifically for touring: the Gold Wing. In time, Honda began offering fairings and luggage as accessories, but these were still add-on parts, equipment for which the machines hadn’t been specifically designed.

" A touring bike is a bike equipped for longer rides with fairings and lockable saddle bags. While early bikers looked on motorcycles equipped for touring with scorn, calling them garbage wagons, over time they began to see their appeal. They began to refer to garbage wagons as baggers and finally dressers, the term many Harley riders use today. "


Other companies offered touring packages for their standard bikes, too, but there’s a problem with this approach: Accessories affect the handling of a machine, often adversely. Large fairings and luggage can really make a bike get squirrelly.

Yamaha decided to make its mark on the touringbike market and in 1983 introduced the Venture, Japan’s first bike designed from the ground up to have an integrated fairing and luggage. The approach of designing a machine from the ground up with this much bodywork produced a seamless motorcycle and sent Honda back to the drawing board.

Honda did not like being sent back to the drawing board, and when it returned, it did so with a vengeance. The 1984 Gold Wing 1200 set new standards in functionality and comfort. The Gold Wing 1500, a six-cylinder behemoth introduced for the 1988 model year, blew away even its predecessor. The Gold Wing proved to be such a perfect touring machine that the other Japanese manufacturers simply gave up trying to compete in that market segment.

The success of the Gold Wing meant the ultimate behemoth class of touring bikes saw relatively little change for over a decade, but eventually things began moving on the touring front again. All it took was a little competition, this time from BMW. In 1999 BMW introduced its K1200LT, and for the first time in more than ten years, Honda’s mighty six-cylinder Gold Wing began losing magazine comparison tests against its heavy-touring market competition. Honda responded by introducing the GL1800 Gold Wing, a bike that was much better in every way than its predecessor.


Sport Tourer - Yamaha FJR 1300
Sport Tourer - Yamaha FJR 1300


All segments of the touring market didn’t go into suspended animation while the Gold Wing waited patiently for a challenger to its throne. There were some exciting developments in other types of touring motorcycles, like the sport-touring segment of the market. Sport tourers combine the comfort and carrying capacity of a touring bike with the handling and excitement of a sportbike. You can think of these machines as sportbikes with larger fairings and hard, lockable luggage. This class existed for a long time without having a proper name; in fact, almost every BMW built in the last quarter of the century falls into this group.

" Sport tourers are motorcycles that combine the comfort and carrying capacity of a touring bike with the handling and power of a sportbike with larger fairings and hard, lockable luggage. "

Kawasaki produced the first purpose-built Japanese sport tourer with its Concours, introduced in 1986. Honda followed suit, bringing out its ST1100 in 1991. Over on the other side of the world, manufacturers like Aprilia, Ducati and Triumph also offer BMW competition in the sport-touring arena.

These bikes represent a compromise, giving up a bit of sporting capability to the smaller, more agile sportbikes while sacrificing some luggage-carrying capability when compared to the ultimate behemoths. It seems a compromise many riders are willing to make. If you like to crank up the throttle in corners and cover huge expanses of geography in a single sitting, but you don’t need to carry everything you own with you on a trip, these bikes may be a good compromise for you, too.

Lately, the touring cruiser, another subcategory of touring bike, has also been developed. The touring-cruiser bikes combine the looks of cruisers with the functionality of touring bikes. With their windshields and hard luggage, they are more comfortable and convenient than cruisers, yet they retain the American look that makes cruisers so popular. Yamaha’s Royal Star Venture and Honda’s Valkyrie Interstate are two of the latest and largest entries in this class. A bit down the food chain in overall bulk (but not overall capability) is Kawasaki’s Vulcan Norads. And of course, Harley has many entries in this category, since it invented the category.

Asia's Twenty-First-Century Explosion in Motorcycle Production




As Japan’s surviving manufacturers are well aware, China is the world’s largest motorcycle market, followed by India in second place and Indonesia in third place. Japanese firms have been making inroads into Asia for many years, in terms of both sales and local manufacturing. From the Suzuki Motor Company’s first overseas motorcycle assembly plant in Thailand in 1967, the manufacturing web of the Big Four (Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha & Kawasaki) makers has spread to developing countries throughout Asia.


The Honda Motor Company entered the lucrative Indian market in 1984 through a joint venture with a local producer, thus forming Hero Honda Motors, Ltd. To date, the New Delhi-based firm has created 2,400 customer “touch points” comprising a host of dealers, service centres, and parts shops throughout urban and rural India. Driven by this well-informed effort to stay connected to its customer base, Hero Honda has been the world’s leading motorcycle manufacturer since 2001. In that year alone it produced 1 million motorcycles – a figure that boosted its total sales history to 5 million units.

The firm’s sales soon doubled to 10 million units by 2004, and in July 2006, pleased with its 48 percent share of the Indian motorcycle market, Honda announced that it would invest an additional US$650 million in a new subsidiary company to expand its production of both motorcycles and automobiles. In a press release, Honda announced that it expected its share in the Indian motorcycle market to reach 7 million to 7.5 million out of a total 12 million units annually.


Faced by such a manufacturing juggernaut, India’s second-largest motorcycle producer, Bajaj, has opted to pursue the world’s third-largest market, Indonesia. Although sales in Indonesia jumped from roughly 1 million units in 2000 to over 5.1 million in 2006, the country now has just one motorcycle for every seven people – compared to one in four people in neighbouring countries. Bajaj therefore sees serious potential in Indonesia and, despite a recent market slump due to inflation and rising interest rates, the company announced in 2006 that it expected to sell 100,000 motorcycles there in its first two years. The Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki motor companies all have production facilities in Indonesia, however, so Japan’s top producers continue, for the moment, to maintain a greater reach than their Asian rivals.

In the long term, the country with perhaps the greatest manufacturing potential is China. Already by the year 2000, Chinese motorcycle manufacturers had an annual production capacity of over 20 million units, even though the country’s domestic sales then totalled approximately 11 million units per year. Domestic sales are limited by China’s municipal governments, and motorcycle usage and sales are banned in major cities in order to curb traffic congestion, noise pollution, and exhaust emissions. Consequently, China’s many motorcycle producers have been forced to pursue aggressive export strategies – particularly to large developing countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Argentina, and Brazil. Chinese makers have been less successful in India, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, however, because those countries’ governments fear that inexpensive (and often illegally copied) Chinese imports will damage their domestic motorcycle industries.

In China itself, Honda Cub - type motorcycles are not as popular as scooter and sport models, but due to the popularity of the Cub type in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia and Vietnam, most exports from China are illegal copies of Japanese Cub-type models. In 2001, Indonesia granted import licences to eighty-seven new motorcycle brands, fifty-seven of which came from China. The quality of these Chinese exports, however, was often very poor.

In a 2001 report, the president of the Association of Motorcycle Industries of Indonesia, Ridwan Gunawan, highlights an important parallel between the development of China’s motorcycle manufacturers and Japan’s postwar motorcycle industry. Gunawan points out that many Chinese motorcycle manufacturers were once government-owned defence companies that produced arms and materiel for China’s military. Over time, many became redundant and therefore converted their operations into vehicle and particularly motorcycle production facilities. Their initial investment cost was low due to their ready supplies of production material, machinery, and trained technicians, and they shortened development time by obtaining licences and forming joint ventures with Japanese manufacturers. But many of these Chinese firms’ local partners later copied those Japanese models without entering into any licensing arrangement with the Japanese patent and design owners.

Thus while the Japanese motorcycle and scooter designs entered the Chinese manufacturing network legally, their illegal replication by unlicensed firms expanded the volume of production tremendously.



The Japan Times reported in 2002 that in addition to China’s 140 licensed motorcycle manufacturers, as many as 400 unlicensed makers were in operation. The article cited a survey by the Beijing office of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), which found that roughly 90 percent of the 1,300 motorcycle models with engines measuring 125 cc or less sold in China in 2000 were copies of Japanese models. JETRO continues to press China’s government on the issue of the illegal copying of motorcycle designs and their various component patents, but Chinese manufacturers are merely speeding up the product development process. This is precisely what the Japanese firms Fuji and Mitsubishi did in 1946 when they copied American designs to produce their Rabbit and Silver Pigeon scooters, respectively.

Nevertheless, the products issued by China’s unlicensed firms are often inferior to Japanese designs because the firms lack the requisite technical skills to manufacture the components correctly; they often incorporate inferior emission- and noise-control devices; and they use locally made materials and machine tools, some of which do not meet the minimum quality standards demanded by licensing agreements. Despite their lower quality, both legal and illegal Chinese motorcycles appeal to consumers in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, where they are sold less expensively than domestically produced models. Although Gunawan notes that competition from imports is positive, giving consumers more choice and stimulating domestic industry, illegal import practices such as under-invoicing and tariff-avoidance cheat the government and undermine the competitiveness of domestic producers. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 may well obligate its manufacturers to follow rules against intellectualproperty rights violations, but in reality only tougher import regulations and smarter consumer behaviour in other regions will affect the bottom lines of unlicensed Chinese motorcycle makers.

On this front, there is hope for licensed manufacturing. In May 2007, George Lin, the president of the Taiwanese motorcycle firm Taiwan Golden Bee, said that although China’s domestic motorcycle industry is still home to dozens of makers and sellers of low-quality, low-cost, copied products who provide no after-service, consumers in neighbouring countries are becoming savvier. Lin said,

"Several years ago, international buyers were very much attracted to China’s low-price motorcycles and parts, but now users of these ‘Made in China’ products have been scared off by their poor quality and durability."

As a result, noted Lin, most of the importers of Chinese motorcycles, especially in developing countries, have closed down. This leaves competing regional firms like Taiwan Golden Bee in a good position to follow the model set forth by Japanese manufacturers in the 1950s and 1960s. Lin explained:

" Japan offers a good example for us; motorcycle makers there stayed competitive despite increasing production costs by taking the lead in the upper-end and larger-displacement segment with unmatched design, development, and cost-control capabilities, and with the introduction of high-end, high-quality products that rivals in Europe and the United States were not producing. Our manufacturers have equally good competitiveness, and they can make the most of the small-volume, large-variety business model. Our motorcycle makers should take aim at their Japanese rivals and not get mired in segments of the industry that can easily be occupied by price-cutting rivals in emerging countries, especially China."

As Lin points out, Japanese firms were forced to stay competitive by investing continually in new designs and manufacturing systems and taking full advantage of economies of scale. Japan may well have begun its initial postwar boom in scooter and motorcycle production through copying foreign designs, but that is not what kept its industry growing and advancing. Copying alone is a technological dead end that will turn only short-term profits, and firms that rely solely upon copying will ultimately fall by the wayside just as they did in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s.

The pattern of explosive growth and rapid contraction of Japan’s motorcycle industry will ultimately play out once more in China, where the illegal copying of licensed designs by inferior firms will eventually fail to generate significant or reliable returns. Furthermore, Japan’s industrial development is not the only pattern that should be studied as a model for developing nations undergoing rapid motorization: Japan’s comprehensive efforts since 1970 to combat road accidents and fatalities could be usefully applied in developing regions throughout South, East, and Southeast Asia.
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