Kawasaki Ninja 650R Trial Production Commences, Launch could be as early as June 8th!

2011 Kawasaki Ninja 650R

Team ICB has learnt that the 2011 Kawasaki Ninja 650R’s trial production has officially begun at India Kawasaki Motor’s plant inside Bajaj Auto’s Chakan unit. The parallel twin sports tourer motorcycle will be assembled from CKD kits arriving from Thailand and thus is expected to be priced very competitively to give the recently launched Hyosung GT650R veritable nightmares as the Ninja is a highly established brand with plenty of street cred compared to the little known Hyosung.

Bajaj Auto has already invited a particular motoring journo to test ride the very first Ninja 650R to emerge out of India over the last weekend and the said journo seemed mighty pleased at the Ninja 650R’s performance. Also, Bajaj Auto is said to have localized a few parts of the Ninja 650R like instrumentation and cables from Indian manufacturers to cut costs and price the Ninja 650R competitively.

2011 Kawasaki Ninja 650R

The 650cc, 72 Bhp parallel twin motorcycle could be launched as early as the 8th of June with deliveries to begin soon after, although we haven’t got official confirmation of this. If that indeed happens with Bajaj indeed manages to price the Ninja 650R at around INR 5.5 Lakhs, the heat will be definitely be on Garware-Hyosung as they would definitely have to pull out all stops to ensure that the Ninja doesn’t knock the wind off the Hyosung GT650R’s sales figures, which thus far has been very encouraging.

Meanwhile, the big reason for Indian motorcycle enthusiasts to look forward for the Ninja 650R is the good levels of service delivered by Bajaj ProBiking outlets to Ninja 250R owners. So, if the same quality of after sales service is maintained by Bajaj, the Ninja 650R stands a very good chance of doing well in India as a market for 6 Lakh Rupee motorcycles definitely exists in India, as evidenced by the number of bookings the Hyosung motorcycles have garnered so far. The run up the Ninja 650R’s launch is now on!