Photo: TVS
It’s kind of official now: BMW and its Indian partner TVS will launch their first bike later this year. Local sources quote what apparently was a declaration of TVS President & CEO K N Radhakrishnan, saying that the debut TVS-BMW bike will be unveiled “in the second half of the current year”.
Just like we expected, no other details have been offered, and this leaves use with certain possibilities. One of them is the Draken concept, even though the odds for seeing it running into a production bike are rather small. While TVS claims that the Draken is an original concept, some voices in the industry say it might receive a TVS-designed engine with plenty of BMW magic and engineering and make it to the market.
Another guess is that the debut TVS-BMW bike will be based on the new, bigger-dsiplacement TVS Apache RTR which was confirmed earlier as a late-2014 model. Even though TVS initially said that the new models will still be centered in the commuter segment, and no plans of building a sporty bike were fathomed, the Indian manufacturer might have changed its mind, as it’s rather clear that BMW will not settle for a common small-displacement two-wheeler.
Finally, some say that TVS will retain a more “tamed approach” for the bikes it plans to sell in India and other Asian markets, while BMW will build a sporty bike to fight the CBR300R, the Ninja 300 and the upcoming Yamaha R25/ R3 and use it to do battle in Europe and North America.
It’s already May, so the wait will not be too long. What seems to have also leaked as confirmed info is the 300cc-class and liquid cooling. But time will tell…
Another guess is that the debut TVS-BMW bike will be based on the new, bigger-dsiplacement TVS Apache RTR which was confirmed earlier as a late-2014 model. Even though TVS initially said that the new models will still be centered in the commuter segment, and no plans of building a sporty bike were fathomed, the Indian manufacturer might have changed its mind, as it’s rather clear that BMW will not settle for a common small-displacement two-wheeler.
Finally, some say that TVS will retain a more “tamed approach” for the bikes it plans to sell in India and other Asian markets, while BMW will build a sporty bike to fight the CBR300R, the Ninja 300 and the upcoming Yamaha R25/ R3 and use it to do battle in Europe and North America.
It’s already May, so the wait will not be too long. What seems to have also leaked as confirmed info is the 300cc-class and liquid cooling. But time will tell…
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