It feels a few zillions of years have passed when we talked Yamaha and performance together! But, finally the giants have woken up and in style. The R3, over R25, for our market was a master stroke and at Rs 3.25 Lakhs ex-showroom Delhi, it is not really cheap but when you compare it with its chief rival – Ninja 300, it starts making sense, a lot of it actually!
Many of you got disheartened by the fact that R3, in India, doesn’t get ABS, even as an option, specially when the single cylinder RC390 gets one despite being a lakh cheaper. It gets even worse when you know that Yamaha offers ABS on R3 internationally!
This question was raised at its launch event yesterday and Yamaha cleared that – if they had added ABS, the price of the motorcycle would have gone up, which they did NOT want. Now, we may debate that they could have offered it as a higher priced option, but then its a company’s decision and quite clearly, they had the Ninja 300 in sight and they did not want to lurk close to it.
The good news, however, is that Yamaha did say that they MAY consider offering ABS in future. But do not mistake it as – Yamaha WILL launch R3 with ABS anytime soon.
We got a chance to test the R3 yesterday at the Buddh International Circuit and let us tell you you can live without ABS on this bike – it is so good! This, we are saying when our short tests were performed on a damp track!
R3 is fantastically well sorted and behaves as you want it to. To know its performance, top speed we clocked, walkaround and exhaust note, head over to our First Ride Review of the motorcycle.
