Big bikes all Euro imports?

[color=red][Mod’s note: This post and the replies were split from another thread about individuals importing vehicles.][/color]

I have only briefly scanned the previous 5 pages of this post, so please forgive me if I am repeating anything.

It seems nobody has yet mentioned the reason that nearly all super bikes that are imported to Taiwan come from Europe and not the much closer and cheaper Japan. The reason is certainly nothing to do with obligations but because Europe uses KPH and not MPH. This makes the greatest difference as the bikes have an onboard computer which manages the fuel delivery cycle as well as other performance mappings etc. If a bike from the U.S. or Japan etc were to be converted to a KPH reading bike to suit Taiwan’s road conditions and government requirements, then the cost of conversion would be ridiculous. THis is why it is still cheaper to ship all the way from Europe a bike that would be much more readily available in Japan.
I already tried asking about the cost of conversion of a Honda CBR600, taking it from MPH to KPH and I was told not to bother as the shops had already thought of this one and it isn’t simple or cheap.

Also it may be worth noting that a bike such as the Honda CBR is exactly the same price, penny for penny in England as it is in Taiwan. Canada I know has the cheapest second hand bikes in the world and so I once had a similar intention of importing, but hoops and technical problems soon told the tale.

To those interested in Kawasaki, Taiwan’s Kawasaki distribution rights is owned and controlled by Kymco. This makes Kawasaki a great choice at the moment, not simply because of the ease of purchase, but also parts for many other bikes such as Honda or Yamaha can be difficult to obtain and may require a lengthy wait in order to import them from overseas.
I am not sure about warranties on such bikes either. Common sense would tell me though that a bike through a distributor would have a much better warranty than a bike simply imported on the grey market.

Other things to note though are that the resale price of a Honda is still much higher than any other bike and Honda bike sales account for 50% of the market, much more than any other brand. Decisions, decisions…

[quote=“sulavaca”]
It seems nobody has yet mentioned the reason that nearly all super bikes that are imported to Taiwan come from Europe and not the much closer and cheaper Japan. The reason is certainly nothing to do with obligations but because Europe uses KPH and not MPH. This makes the greatest difference as the bikes have an onboard computer which manages the fuel delivery cycle as well as other performance mappings etc. If a bike from the U.S. or Japan etc were to be converted to a KPH reading bike to suit Taiwan’s road conditions and government requirements, then the cost of conversion would be ridiculous[/quote]

Utter balderdash…I ride a Kawasaki, a US model that isn’t even available in Europe. In fact when you pop the tank for a gas fill, there is a California emission warning sticker right inside the tank. Ordering KPH conversion bikes from Japan strictly for export to other countries is common in the US, where their huge ordering capacity will far outstrip any pricing discounts you could get in Europe.

When I was shopping for bikes, I checked out many different models, including drooling over some Ducatis in Hsinchu…When I enquired as to the bikes origins, all were from California, which is the case for virtually every big bike imported into this country.

My particular bike in Europe is badged as the EF-6R or EF-6N…In the US, it’s the Ninja 650R. As you can see from this photo, mine is firmly a US model:

Whatever decision you make purchase wise in the big bike department, rest assured that most likely the only foreign port that this bike rolled out of a container in before coming here was Long Beach, CA.

Japan uses the metric system. Why would their bikes use MPH?

MJB and kamiwaza already said it but… utter rubbish… Firstly Japan uses km/h not mph so we really needn’t go on, but in the interests of allowing you to go to whoever told you these twisted fairytales and telling them they don’t know their arse from a hole in the ground, allow me to elaborate… the bike’s ECU is contantly monitoring engine RPM, throttle position, temperature, atmospheric/fuel/oil pressure, oxygen levels in the exhaust gases and a few other perameters and using the info the orchestrate FI and engine managment… one of the systems outputs is a speed reading determined by crank shaft speed and gear selection which is then sent to the speedometer, in the vast majority (but not all) modern bikes this speedo is a digital display and at the touch of a button it will display in mph or km/h… the cost of conversion here would be $0.00 (that’s in US$, not NT$ :wink: ) if it were a bike with an analogue speedo a conversion would involve obtaining a print out of the scaled speedometer face available from countless websites… cost of conversion in this case about US$20 or less… to complete a left hand drive to right hand drive conversion you’d need to adjust the angle of the dipped beams on the headlight, but nobody has brought that up yet…

sure, but that serves mostly to highlight the fact that England has the highest bike prices in Europe more than anything else…

yes Kawsaki have official dealers in TW that offer official warranties… so do BMW, Suzuki and Ducati… Yamaha are set to get on board soon but Honda still regards Taiwans sales market as being too small to setup an official dealer network… that said it is possible to get warranty/recall parts for a bike bought from an importer, but you’ll either have to do the work yourself or pay someone who can… That puts Honda/Yamaha at a significant disadvantage…

where do you get this nonsense?.. I assume you’re talking about the UK market since it’s just flat out false that Honda has 50% market share in TW, as we mentioned above they don’t even have dealers here… trouble is even if you’re talking about the UK your info is still horribly wrong… Honda is by no means the most expensive brand, if you compare UK MSRP of flagship sportsbikes you’ll notice Honda is neatly at the 2nd cheapest position…Ducati 999: £11,250… BMW K1200S: £10,100…Kawasaki ZX10R £9,000…Aprillia RSV1000: £8,999…Honda CBR1000RR: £8,899…Yamaha R1: £8,799… Also in 2005 Honda’s market share in the UK was far from 50%, it was 22.3% of total motocycle sales and that largely is due to the sale of thousands of CBR125s which sold more than any other Honda model in 2005… worryingly for Honda that 22.3% was a 2.2% drop in market share, with Honda being the only Japanese factory to loose market share in 2005…

Lastly the vast majority of Japanese bikes imported by official dealers in Taiwan come from… Japan… they are simply the California spec that all factories produce to meet CA emissions and homologation standards which are similar to Taiwan’s loony tunes standards… thus the Jap bikes we get here are homologated and smogged just as California bikes are, perhaps with some minor ECU fueling maps to account for TW fuels, actually they are more often than not just tagged onto the end of a California bound production run at the factories but then shipped directly to Taiwan… The Japanese factories are way too ahead of the game to be shipping bikes to California/Europe and then all the way back to Taiwan, I mean for chris’sakes they’re Japanese, they invented efficiency…

I suspect the majority of your terrible information Sulavaca, came from Taiwanese grey importers… not only are they usually utterly ignorant and more than willing to spin the big nose a yarn to make it seem like they know wha they’re talking about, but in reality a lot of TW importers do source their bikes from Europe, since there are more EU bulk dealers willing to do business with the TWese and since Jap bikes are often power limited and setup for LHD… the grey importers obviously source what they can where they can, but don’t buy their reasons and stories behind why it happens or how widespread it is in the TW market since as you now know 90% of it is :bs: …

[quote=“MJB”]I ride a Kawasaki, a US model that isn’t even available in Europe. In fact when you pop the tank for a gas fill, there is a California emission warning sticker right inside the tank. Ordering KPH conversion bikes from Japan strictly for export to other countries is common in the US, where their huge ordering capacity will far outstrip any pricing discounts you could get in Europe.

When I was shopping for bikes, I checked out many different models, including drooling over some Ducatis in Hsinchu (Xinzhu)…When I enquired as to the bikes origins, all were from California, which is the case for virtually every big bike imported into this country.

My particular bike in Europe is badged as the EF-6R or EF-6N…In the US, it’s the Ninja 650R. As you can see from this photo, mine is firmly a US model:
[/quote]

Ducatis are only produced in Bologna, Italy according to my information and so naturally are produced in both KPH and MPH from the same factory. It may be so that many bikes are redistributed from the U.S. but they certainly won’t have been converted twice. They are probably exported to the U.S. to then be redistributed to other countries. Regarding your own model Kawasaki, as you said, it isn’t produced in Europe full stop, so there is no suprise that the model is not supplied from Europe. Regarding virtually every big bike comming from California, if Honda accounts for the larger percentage of big bikes as was the case a year ago, then the majority of them are from Europe. I’m not arguing however as the last time I went out for bikes was about a year ago. At that time all the Hondas that I saw were from Europe and every catalogue of available colours was European.

This may not be an indicator to the source of any vehicle. As the U.S. is indeed one of the largest importers of vehicles in the world, many vehicles are stickered up with U.S regulatory transfers, simply to keep production down to a minimum of lines in a factory. This goes too for tyres, and this is the reason that all the world’s wheels for cars, trucks, bikes and bicycles are still measured in inches and speed ratings in MPH; it saves on production lines and favors the largest importer in the world, the U.S.A.

Hi and welcome, Sulavaca.

[quote=“sulavaca”]I have only briefly scanned the previous 5 pages of this post, so please forgive me if I am repeating anything…[/quote]Don’t worry, you were definitely not repeating anything! Still, the thread you posted in is about individuals trying to import vehicles, rather than grey importers/dealerships, so I’ve split off your post and the replies into this new thread.