Chinese, Japanese?

[pepperami]

Yet again old Peppers was trawling thief-bay with a pocket full of no cash and an empty bank account!

So I was looking at all sorts of strange and odd bikes.
I was thinking how when Chinese bikes first started to appear in numbers, they all seemed to be 125 clones and peds?.
That got me to to thinking about when Japanese bikes first appeared on our shores and their bikes were all small capacity.
When the Japanese bikes first appeared on our shores there would have been no support structure in place and they would of had to of worked at establishing a network.
Sound familiar to any Chinese bike owners?

Once the Japanese had got a foot in the door, they started broadening their range of bikes and the rest is history (CB 750 four)
The Japanese improved quality and reliability .
Now the Chinese are starting to broaden their ranges of bikes.https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Honley-Venturer-250-motorcycle-motorbike-/321569970058?pt=UK_Motorcycles&hash=item4adf10578a

Will they last as long as the Japanese?
The Japanese seemed to of got it right for a long time ?
Or are the Chinese bike makers doomed to forever try to sell us lesser quality machinery and greatly inflated prices?
Or will the Chinese improve quality and then sell us their machinery at prices similar to those of the Japanese and European bike makers.
____________________
I am the sum total of my own existence, what went before makes me who I am now!

[Tungtvann]

Japan has been an innovator though, since WW2 they've been a heavyweight in everything from electronics to motoring. China only ever seems to want to push out cheap, mass produced copied crap. That's all they ever seem to want to do, copy someone else's idea and make it as cheap and shoddily as possible.

China has the potential to make quality goods, but in general, they seem to choose not to. Japan may have improved since their stuff started hitting out shores, but were they ever complete and utter junk? (from some quick research, apparently not, even some of their stuff from 60s was noted for its quality and excellent features).

That's just my opinion, I haven't studied and tested all 1960s Japanese motorcycles, nor Chinese motorcycles from the last few years. This is just my perception about what both countries are, past and present.

[wr6133]

My theory

Chinese has improved (certain makes anyway). Thing is it won't be improving a lot in a hurry because most of what you see is rebranded by 3rd party importers, the Chinese factories just stack it high and sell in bulk to whoever so don't really have any "brand" they want to build. The Japanese were building brands so the people that made the bike cared about the end user, the Chinese are mostly just building bikes to sell to middlemen they care more about the margin.

Other thing is Jap and Euro or US makers are seeing the cheap Chinese stuff shift and thinking they can cheap out on manufacturing to bolster their margins so their quality will go down (CBF? YBR which is a rebadged Chinese bike, BMW using Chinese made Lifan engines, etc).

In short I think the Chinese stuff may improve more very slowly, the other stuff will slowly go down in quality. Eventually they will meet in the middle or the gap will be close enough the lower price makes Chinese stuff the common sense choice.

[Itchy]

[jjdugen]

The Japanese had two massive advantages when they first came to Europe / America.
1. The British motorcycle industry was living on borrowed time and producing outdated designs inefficiently. on worn out machinery.
2. The Japanese industries had been re-equiped with state of the art !American) machinery and were largely based on 50cc step thrus that sold allover Asia and to Europeans wanting reliable cheap transport.
They had a healthy cash flow, perceptive marketing and learner machines that gave real performance.
Nowadays, motorcycles are niche, riders ever older. Its a shrinking market, even the cheap and cheerful Chinese will find it hard to survive as new riders are legislated off the roads and the old codgers start falling of their perches.

Incidentally. I don't get the panic over housing and roads, the 25 MILLION baby boomers are going to die off over the next ten - twenty years, there will be lots of space then.
____________________
The CBR900RR has been sold. Aprilia Falco worms its way into my heart.
Try Soi 23 on Amazon for a good read.... Self promotion? Moi?

[Itchy]

[ws4936]

Kawasaki were originally ship builders. They still build ships today, but under a diferrent branch off.

Do the Chinese build ships?
____________________
If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.

[Itchy]

[ws4936]

[Polarbear]

[Rogerborg]

Can you name any Chinese motorcycle brands?

Can you picture their logos?

I can only think of one Chinese maker which actively pushes one of its brandings in the UK. The rest just sell to whichever Dodgy Dan is prepared to buy a contained full of their disposable wares and slap their own badge on them.

When their involvement ends as soon as the bikes leave the factory, I can't see Chinese bikes getting significantly better.

However, outsourcing looks to be driving "Japanese" 125s in the same direction, so they might meet in the middle. For my money, I'd honestly rather gamble it on a Jinan Qingqi Sinnis than a CBF.
____________________
Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[Polarbear]

[G]

I've found it interesting to note that as the quality is improved, the price ends up near Japanese prices anyway.
Turns out you DO get what you pay for! (Well, yes, maybe not in the case of the CBF125, of course.)

The Comet (not Chinese, I appreciate) 650 was mooted as a 'sports bike for £3k'. What we got was a poor SV650 copy for SV650 money.

[Polarbear]

[wr6133]

[mudcow007]

i remember watching a tv show about Daewoo

daewoo trucks, bring all parts made by daewoo which had been carried on daewoo trains to the factories to make their cars n shiz....they are then taken on daewoo ships to be sold around the world

literally they made everything!!

[Rogerborg]

Yup, Sinnis.

[kramdra]

Except that Sinnis are utter cunts. Im talking about their main UK dealership, the manager/owner, parts guy especially. The stealth is an excellent bike as far as learners go, other than a few small issues, slow chinky engine and poorly designed brakes.

They are perfectly happy to ruin any brand image by selling dodgy used parts as if they are new and then provide no warranty/backup when those parts are found to be utter shit. Buying new from them is a massive risk, a used bike privately for a couple hundred quid is not so bad.

However the problem with china, and any where in the world, is scum float to the top, they have the power, money, greed and dont want to invest. China has a much bigger gap between poor and rich but they are perfectly capable of churning out decent shit quite cheap (low risk, stuff that require no R&D).

[trevor saxe-coburg-gotha]

[trevor saxe-coburg-gotha]

[suburban myth]

[wr6133]

[Rogerborg]

Sorry to hear that about Sinnis support. I did hear from a local dealer that they like to argue the toss over replacement parts. That's exactly the wrong thing to do. I hope that Jinan Qingqi sort it out.

Lexmoto (including Pulse) are a bit of a success story. They dwarf any other reseller, and parts support is excellent. But again, they're just importing what they consider to be the best bikes and winnowing out the chaff. Given the tiny sales in the UK compared to China, and the fact that Lexmoto are pocketing the markup, I can't see that actually pushing any manufacturers to chase the export market with improved quality.

[BigShow]

China will never produce anything refined, why bother? everyone is getting absolutely loaded off the current model. Which is to pay a pittance to modern day slaves in factories with suicide nets.

[trevor saxe-coburg-gotha]