Honda CRF300 India Launch Soon?

Select few Honda owners got to ride the Honda CRF300L and the CRF300 Rally in Bengaluru recently

Honda seems to be brewing something adventurous for the Indian market. Recently the Japanese brand conducted a customer ride clinic to gauge the interest for its off-road motorcycles in Bengaluru. The customer clinic was held at the Big Rock Dirtpark in Bengaluru. The bikes which were showcased were the Honda CRF300L and the CRF300 Rally. As mentioned before these aren’t adventure tourers but hardcore off-road motorcycles which have won many international races to prove their mettle.

The two critical aspects for an off-road motorcycle is agility and toughness to tackle the harsh terrains. For this reason the Honda CRF300 is equipped with a rugged steel cradle frame which is suspended on long travel 43mm USD fork and monoshock unit. Ground clearance is also very impressive at 285mm. Now coming to agility, the lightweight frame and the lack of heavy body panels means, the CRF300 is pretty light at just 142 kg (kerb weight). The large 21/18-inch setup also improves the agility of the bike, whereas the off-road tyres ensure it offers ample grip even on the loosest of surfaces.

Both the bikes are powered by a 286 cc, single-cylinder, liquid-cooled engine that delivers 27 bhp and 26.6 Nm. The engine and the gear ratios have been tuned in such a manner that there’s strong low and mid-range performance. Being an off-road motorcycle, the seat is narrow and short, the focus is to make the bike as compact as possible. Having said that, seat height is daunting at 880 mm.

So will the Honda CRF300 family come to India? Well, a customer clinic isn’t an affirmation that these bikes will be launched because such activities are done by brands to take customer feedback for market understanding. While adventure tourers are gaining a lot of popularity in our country, off-road motorcycles remain a niche, the other issue for Honda is pricing. The Honda CRF300L retails for ₹ 4.55 lakh and the CRF300 Rally is priced at ₹ 5.17 lakh in international markets, which is very high by Indian market standards. Having said that we already have such motorcycles on sale, the Kawasaki KLX and KX series of off-road motorcycles are already on sale and Suzuki had the RM-Z250 and the RM-Z450 in 2018.