Where are all the CB1100?

[pekingduck]

when they came out, the bonneville was 7900 at the local dealer ( i know, my ex wife worked there), about 8500 out the door. honda was 11k out door (know the old sales manager at mcckinney salinas). nowhere close. they are now selling holdovers in the 6-7k range, honda isnt going to lose money on them, so 8.5k new should have yielded plenty of profit.

I would have to disagree that they could have sold the 2013/2014 standards new for anything close to $8500. There just isn't that much profit margin in them. When the dealers didn't buy them new, they (the US distributor) had to discount them each year. They also had to pay rent on warehouse space and interest for financing them as they sat in the warehouses for 4 years. There were definitely losses taken just to get rid of them.

I completely disagree. ducati made the same mistake with the sport classics, was considered a failure. when everybody wanted one was when they quit making them, then the prices went low.. then, 2 years later, thru the roof on the used market.

like i said, the bonneville is the best example of this done correctly. you can't swing a stick without hitting one on any gathering of bikes, they are everywhere. they are great quality bikes as well. and i'm sorry, honda has -never- been about exclusivity. it flies in the face of their business philosophy in the bike world.

bmw, audi, etc examples really don't apply here IMHO. the bikes we are discussing are niche market bikes. the cars aren't niche market cars. (there's an audi tt sitting in my garage actually ).

I agree with your Ducati and Triumph comments, but not about Honda. While they do need to have high volume models, they also have had so many low volume niche models: Rune, DN-01, VFR1200 and VFR1200X, NM4, CTX1300, Valkyrie 6, all scarcer than the CB1100. I can count on one hand the number of those I've seen on the road.