Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 13 MARCH 31, 2015 P101 Above all I am a sports fan. I play golf regularly to quite a high level, and I like a lot of different sports, and motorsports is one of them. I haven't so far focused much on motorcycle racing, but lately I've been watching it more closely, and I like what I see. Eventually I'm sure Hero MotoCorp itself will also get into racing. Would you ever bring Superbike to India? Unfortunately, motorsports in India has gone through a difficult phase, and even the Formula 1 race in Delhi is still not back on the calendar after three years. I hope that Formula 1 will return, and more motorcycle racing can happen in India. But right now what we have in India is very, very basic. In the HX250R single launched last year you have the perfect potential model for a Hero one-make race series. Would you consider doing that in India? Yes, we will surely con- sider doing that when the bike reaches production next year. It's a sound idea. Were you disappointed with the performance of the Hero-sponsored EBR entries in the World Superbike series last year? Or were your hopes not too high because you knew it would be a development year for them? Not being so deeply involved in racing, I did not understand originally that this was more a devel- opment year, so I was obviously looking for re- sults. The media made a lot of noise about Hero's involvement with racing, but unfortunately it's not been very successful so far. I'm hoping things will get better as we go on. So we're returning to the series this year under the new rules, which I'm told favor our machine more. What plans do you have for the prototype models that Hero displayed at the last Auto Expo? How many of these will reach produc- tion, starting for example with the HX250R single? The HX250R will reach production shortly. I think we have about a year to go with developing it, so we'll launch it early in 2016. How about the Hastur 620cc twin? Which seems to have the potential to be branded as an EBR or as a Hero, so it could be sold on many different markets, in many different variants. What are your plans for that? I'm personally very keen on that particular concept model, and I'm bullish about the middleweight category for Hero. Right now we're doing a lot of research on various markets, and I'm sure we will soon get working seriously on designing the different variants; which I agree this model lends itself to—absolutely. And with the potential to brand these as both EBR and Hero models? Right now we're studying our branding strategy—not just for the middleweight sector, but overall. Could you foresee EBR V-twins becoming Heros out- side America—so in other words, would you re-label EBR products made by them in the USA? Let's see what the branding strategy study comes out with. So far Hero has been active mostly in the utility segment, with our range built around smaller capacity models and very highly fuel-efficient engines. So we really want to see whether people believe that a Hero can also be a Superbike. One more question about the HX250R - can it also be made into a 300cc bike or larger, just as Honda has done with its CBR300R? Many other companies have done that, and we "WE WANT TO QUICKLY GET HERO AWAY FROM THE IMAGE OF BEING JUST A UTILITY MOTORCYCLE MAKER, AND GET INTO OTHER SECTORS."

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