Marketing is a wonderful thing. It is the tool we use to tell others what wonderful new products we have, that you need, and will make your life better.
Today we know how dangerous it is too, it gives people license to express their free will by pushing products that ultimately do more harm than good. The automotive world is no different here, companies want to sell their products and will use every dodgy sales technique to sell more and ultimately make more.
This includes over-hyping bikes that don’t necessarily merit our attention, these are 10 of those bikes that fell flat on their faces when we finally got a chance to experience them in person.
10 Yamaha Niken
In all fairness to the bike itself, it is something different, so we don’t want to punish it for that. The problem came with the excessive marketing Yamaha did for the bike, it was billed as the next best thing.
The end result was just a very big, very heavy, very expensive Yamaha Tricity that will overheat in traffic. It will be a good tourer, but for this kind of money it is in the same price range as the best tourer, so we’d rather just buy that.
9 Honda Monkey
Some will disagree, but for all intents and purposes, the new Honda Monkey is just a modified Grom.
When we say modified, we mean stripped down and simplified, so to achieve that heritage “look and feel.” All that reduction ends up costing roughly $500 more, for essentially the same bike.
8 Indian Scout
There was a lot of positive energy surrounding the effective resurrection of the Indian motorcycle brand, which is steeped in history. In many ways, this had less to do with marketing and more to do with the public perception of the old brand.
The new bike is not necessarily bad, it is an average cruiser swimming in a sea of better options, essentially depending on the brand for sales considering the inflated price tag.
7 Bimota V2 500
Not many bikes get to claim that they sank an entire company. Sadly, the V2 500 did exactly that, once and for all settling the two v four-stroke debate in the sports bike community.
It is easy to see why people expected so much from the bike, the designer responsible for the Ducati 916 penned this beautiful bike, and before it was launched, we would have also signed up for it. The engineering just let it down, becoming famously unreliable.
6 KTM 790 Duke
“The Scalpel” was very elegantly marketed, KISKA did a decent job of designing it too, even with the now-characteristic alien face. The bike just doesn’t live up to any of those promises it made, it handles well, but isn’t class-leading, it makes good power but not quite the beast it promises to be.
When you eventually get around to reading between all the marketing lines, the Duke with all the nice Powerparts is what they selling you, and will cost quite a bit more out the door. Enough to consider a naked with 4-cylinders from a Japanese brand.
5 Ducati Scrambler
We're not going to pick on just one bike here, we're going to pick on the entire range. This is one of those times the Volkswagen Group’s ownership shines through. Ducati beat a trend when they launched the Sport Classic range, although they were fantastic machines the whole retro thing wasn’t quite a thing yet.
With the Scrambler, the marketing machine just took over and made certain the company would make bank, hyping the bike's new nameplate as an entry-level Ducati and making the most of the well and truly established fad.
4 Kawasaki Ninja 250
A lot of noise was made about the little 250 inline-4 screamer. In the end, that is all it really does; make a lot of noise.
It is a throwback to a different time, which a lot of people will love, but sadly there are better, cheaper bikes around now that are made with fewer cylinders.
3 KTM 390 Adventure
Pretty much since the first generation of the Duke 390 hit the market, there has been a demand for an entry-level adventure bike. So many people already went so far as to modify their Dukes into their own versions of a 390 Adv, but once the rubber met the road reality set in.
Everything great about the little duke gets lost in the Adv version, except for the torquey engine.
2 Suzuki Katana
This is a prime example of a company finding, by hook or by crook, a way to extend the life of a dated platform. When it was first conceived, we all bought into the fact that we would be getting an all-new machine, not an old GSX-S with different fairings.
Barely scraping through modern emissions regulations, Suzuki is all too happy to climb on the retro bandwagon with the not-so-new Katana.
1 Yamaha MT-03
Yamaha really does get the most out of its platforms, you have to give them some credit for that. The MT-03 is just taking it a bit far, the R3 is a great little entry-level sportbike that is very capable on track because of its light frame and decent suspension.
Changing the geometry and making a mini naked is simply giving into market-related pressure created by other, better bikes from other manufacturers.