VOL. 50 ISSUE 21 MAY 29, 2013
P65
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEVIN WING
T
he response of each of the four Japanese manufacturers to the
2008 global financial implosion and its continuing after-effects
has been quite varied, and says a lot about each company.
Conservative Suzuki has retreated into a corporate bunker, and battened down the hatches to wait out the storm – so, essentially, no new
products of any significance from that direction. By contrast, upbeat
Kawasaki, as a tiny slice of a huge engineering conglomerate that isn't
going broke anytime soon, has regarded this as a business opportunity
rather than a catastrophe. So in pursuit of increased market, Big Green
The two all-new
Honda 500s – the
CBR500R (left)
and the naked
version of the
same bike – the
CBF500.
