Why the CB1100 will never be a big seller

[jerrycon_imp]

I'm with Guth. They didn't develop this jewel of a bike for overseas markets.

I wonder how many guys like me were sending emails to every small and big town chamber of commerce organization in Kumamoto Prefecture ([url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumamoto_Prefecture]熊本県). I begged them to let me have one. And finally they did. And I'm grateful.

I don't believe Honda had any aspirations of making money on the CB1100 overseas. They took care of the faithful, the aficionados, those of us--few in number--with an appreciation of the history going all the way back to Soichiro Honda ([url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soichiro_Honda]本田 宗一郎) fixing bicycles and dropping out of school.

Don't want to be a faithful caretaker of the exquisite machine designated as the CB1100? That's okay. Not all are worthy.

Disclaimer: I do not mean to imply that the CB1100 is without its imperfections. It has them like any other motorcycle. But if you're outside of Japan, then Honda did you a really big favor, and a bit of gratitude is called for.

If nothing else, like Capo has mentioned before, I would have liked to see Honda feature the CB1100 a bit more prominently in their showrooms. But then I remind myself that they initially developed the CB1100 for the Japanese market and had no intention of bringing the bike to North America back then. I've stated in the past that I've often felt like Honda was sort of throwing us a bone here in the States by finally bringing the bike over here. I'm guessing that our general reaction to the bike hasn't come as too much of a surprise to their corporate types.

Honda certainly has money to dump into some sort of real marketing effort for the CB1100 if that was what they wanted to do. Obviously that hasn't been part of their plan for the bike. Releasing a small number of these machines over here that were priced on the high side of what consumers could bear with little fanfare to speak of was what Honda decided to do. Surely they realized that such a plan wouldn't result in large sales figures for the CB1100. Despite my disappointment with Honda's choices when it comes to marketing the bike, if nothing else I remain grateful that they changed their mind about releasing it to the US market. I can still remember when it seemed like that was never going to happen.

For reference, Triumph sold a total of approximately 50,000 motorcycles worldwide in 2016. Honda sold something like 1.5 million. They spend over $200 million on car advertising in the US alone. They can do whatever they want. They would produce as many CB's as they possibly could sell.

Recall Ferrett's posting about Honda building precisely the bike they wanted to? I concur. And they advertise it precisely as much as they want to. I'm in that business and have worked with Honda on campaigns.

Regarding Nortoon's vivid comments about the ugliness of CB's, in that this is a tight forum, and 99 % of the members own 'ugly blacked out / twisted pipes' bikes, a little common courtesy might be a good idea.


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Good point of reference. In that light, just imagine the impact it would have on Triumph Motorcycles Ltd if they were to never have sold the Bonneville here in the States. Such a decision would have had quite a notable effect on the company. On the other hand, if Honda had stuck with their original plan to not bring the CB1100 over here, the impact would be negligible in the overall scheme of things as far as Honda is concerned. With that in mind, one can understand why Triumph offers so much in the way of related accessories and lifestyle products (and perhaps why Honda doesn't).