Honda Scrambler 350 as a concept looks interesting but why does the overall plan look like a Royal Enfield copy! We discuss..
Looks like someone from Royal Enfield has joined Honda, right at the top. The problem is not that it is getting inspired from the Chennai-based maker’s products and plans, it seems to be directly copying them now.
The latest CB350 already looks very similar to the Classic 350 and the upcoming product catalog is a copy paste as well, at least what it looks like at this point. Royal Enfield branched out two products – an ADV and a scrambler on the 410 platform. Both the products had similar traits and many parts that were shared.
And here we have Honda coming up with an ADV that looks very similar to the Himalayan in sketches (see here) and well, there is a Scrambler too, that also looks very inspired by the RE Scram!
It follows the exact same recipe that Royal Enfield adopted for the Himalayan-Scram. We can see that the tank and the seat are lifted from the ADV sibling. Unlike the spoke wheels of the ADV, here we have alloy wheels, apart from an upswept exhaust and a slightly lowered overall motorcycle.
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The engine is expected to be the same 350cc, single cylinder air-cooled mill of the CB350s with similar power and torque outputs. But we do expect different tuning for the new application it will be put to.
As a standalone idea, the concept of a low cost basic ADV as well as an accessible Scrambler looks terrific, but a significant bit of differentiation is expected, specially if you are a world renowned motorcycle maker, selling truckloads of models internationally.
No matter how luring the idea of Royal Enfields look, there has to be significant differentiation. Yezdi’s direct copy of the Himalayan hasn’t worked. It will be very interesting to see how Honda creates some sort of a demarcation in its Himalayan and Scram rivals. Launch timeline isn’t known but we should have something concrete on this either towards the end of this year, or early next year…
