At the time of revealing its EV roadmap for India recently, Honda also announced that we will see a new bike based on the CB350 platform by the end of this year. This platform has been built to take on the Royal Enfield 350cc line-up. And seeing how Honda already has the H’ness to take on the Classic 350, and the CB350RS that’s branded as a scrambler, we expect this new bike to take the shape of a cruiser, and go toe-to-toe with the Meteor 350.
Cruisers are certainly a niche, but the Meteor has been doing its bit to try and change that, contributing around 8,000 units to RE’s sales figures most months. Our bet is that Honda is be hoping to carve out a piece of this pie for itself, and if this is the case, then it could re-engineer the H’ness CB350 to achieve this. If Honda does end up using the basis of the H'ness to create a cruiser, platform-engineering history tells us it's quite probable that the main frame will remain the same, as will the air-cooled 348cc single-cylinder engine.
But all the dressing over the top is likely to be more in-line with cruiser styling, and Honda could draw inspiration from something like its own Rebel 300 cruiser sold overseas. Suspension set-up might be tweaked, too, to offer a more raked-out front end and make the bike ride lower to the ground, as is typical with cruisers. Bottom-end grunt (something that you expect from a cruiser) isn’t necessarily a trademark of this engine, and Honda could play around with gearing and sprocketing to try and compensate for this.
If the new bike hopes to make a dent in Meteor sales, it will need to be priced in the same ballpark. So you can expect it to sit around the Rs 2 lakh to 2.2 lakh mark (ex-showroom). Honda says the bike will be here by November, but you can expect a launch slightly earlier than that, around the festive season.
That’s not all for Honda’s petrol-powered plans this year. Also on the cards for FY24 are a new 125cc scooter and 160cc motorcycle. The former will likely share its underpinnings with the Activa 125, and perhaps be dressed in a sportier suit, to take on the likes of the TVS NTorq and Suzuki Avenis. The latter is tipped to borrow its engine from the X-blade and Unicorn, though there are no clues as to what direction Honda will take with this bike. Perhaps we could see an ADV-esque guise, as Honda did with the CB200X that’s based on the Hornet 2.0.