During the launch of the Ninja 250R, Rajiv Bajaj said that Bajaj tried to be someone else (Hero Honda) by making hoards of commuter bikes, when the fact of the matter was that the market used to look upon them as a performance bike maker. Hence they shifted focus from making entry level mileage mongers to making more performance oriented bikes. Honda on the other hand, just wants to sell as many units as possible and be the number one overall, no matter what. And in the bid to do so, it seems they are even ready to adopt the market leader (and their sister concern) Hero Honda’s strategies!
And look what we have here! The ‘brand new’ 2010 Unicorn which is now called the ‘CB’ Unicorn. What HMSI have skilfully done here is, adopt the Hero Honda strategy of adding pluses, stars, slashes and minuses to the existing model names and instead replace these mathematical characters with more popular Honda tags like ‘CB’, ‘CBF’ etc. and expect the customers to be fooled into believing that its an upgrade! Along with the new name, the Unicorn also gets a viscous air filtering element which is now becoming standard on all HMSI vehicles. So if you are still looking at a 13 odd horsepower sport-commuter that now has a flashy name and new air filter, then send a cheque of seventy odd thousand rupees to your nearest Honda two-wheeler showroom. For everyone else, the rest of the 150cc segment is moving forward with better styling and power – so make your decisions wisely.
But you never know! This ridiculous upgrade might just be a temporary arrangement and the production version of the Unicorn Concept shown at the 2010 Auto Expo may come out soon.