Honda Bikes in India

As a mark of importance and to highlight the seed of Honda’s pioneering automotive work, exhibited at the entrance of the Honda Collection Hall in Japan is the bicycle equipped with an auxiliary engine made from a small, remodeled unit that had served as a power generator for an old No. 6 military radio transmitter (October 1946). This engine marked the origin of Honda Motor.

To make its mark on the global motorcycle racing scene, the Honda Racing Service was established in March 1973 to handle motorcycle racing activities,  while in 1978 the New Racing (NR) Division was established. The two were combined in September 1982 and renamed as Honda Racing Company Limited.

While talking about Honda bikes in India, in 1984, Honda and the Hero Group inked an agreement to manufacture and sell motorcycles in India under the brand entity, Hero Honda. However, this joint venture (JV) was considerably affected by Honda’s later decision to enter the Indian market through its Indian subsidiary, Honda Motorcycles India (HMSI) in 1999. Honda made its entry into the motorcycle segment with 150cc CB Unicorn - the first Honda bike in India – and followed this with the launch of 125cc CB Shine in 2006. Honda bikes price list starts at around ₹ 41,800 for the 2018 Navi and go up to ₹ 28 lakhs for the 2018 Gold Wing.

In 2010, after a year of speculation and hectic negotiations, the Hero Group announced the termination of its 26-year-old joint venture with Honda Motor Corporation is the world’s largest two-wheeler company, Hero Honda for all the Honda two wheelers. Due to the growing differences in future expansion plans and strategies of both the stakeholders, the venture reached its inevitable end with Hero group buying out Honda’s stake in the JV and later the brand was renamed to Hero MotoCorp.

The production of Honda all bikes commenced from its first plant of 1.65-million-unit capacity in Haryana. In 2011, Honda expanded to its second plant in Rajasthan with a 1.2-million-unit annual capacity. In 2013, came the third plant in Karnataka with 1.8-million-unit annual capacity.

In 2018, HMSI celebrated a historical milestone as the company’s four manufacturing plants in India together crossed the 35 million two-wheeler mark in total. With this, Honda became the only two-wheeler brand in India to reach this milestone and cross the 35-million-unit mark in 17 years.

The Honda new bikes in India consists of the SP 125, Activa, Aviator, Grazia, Dio, Cliq, Navi, X-Blade, CB Hornet, CB Shine, CB Unicorn, Livo, Dream Neo, Dream Yuga, CD 110 Dream, CBR 650F, CB1000R, CBR1000RR, Gold Wing and the Africa Twin. In April 2020, all the latest Honda bikes will be upgraded to meet the stringent BS-VI emission norms.