Honda boss wants a V5 for the road

The new general manager of Honda UK says he wants to see a V5 sports bike built for the road based on the new GP four-stroke and that he expects the latest Blade to be used as the basis for a new sports tourer.

And Mark Davies is not a man without influence in these matters. His job as boss of the biggest bike marque in the UK means Japan listens to what he has to say.

He gave us an exclusive interview and, proving how passionate about bikes he is, he travelled over 100 miles to our offices in freezing conditions on a Varadero.

The full interview is published in MCN on January 9, 2002. Here are some of the highlights.

MCN: What will customers see change with you in charge? I think we can do a lot more for motorcycling and its acceptability in society. I need more people to be on bikes and would like to see more people on bikes because I think people can enjoy it. I also think it’s a valid solution to congestion and other environmental problems. It seems at the moment that there is a degree of political acceptance of that, so I would hope we can take advantage of that to get bikes more widely recognised as a bloody good solution to a host of problems. Ideally, I’d like people to be on Hondas but fundamentally I just want them on bikes.

MCN: Carnell/City is advertising Hondas at very cheap prices. How does that work? Davies: Carnell has to make its own business decisions. The whole industry has got the supply equation wrong over the past 18 months. Most manufacturers have oversupplied and when that happens laws of demand and supply go out the window and it’s price which is affected. Why one dealer lowers the price more than another is their business.

MCN: Why would Carnell be able to sell the bikes cheaper than other dealers? Carnell don’t get a special deal if that’s what you’re getting at. I guess their business model is just high turnover with low profit margins. They can get high turnover because of their size.

MCN: What can you do about insurance costs? The average storage cost involved in a bike insurance claim is £280. The insurance companies are having to pay that. Now, it may just be that the networks aren’t set up to respond within a reasonable lead time. If we could find some way of working with the companies to reduce that lead time, for example, we’d be able to cut the insurance companies costs – savings which would hopefully be passed on to the customer. It’s a matter of finding out what the actual problems are and seeing whether they’re things we can help to resolve ourselves. Our work with car insurers has shown that costs can be dropped dramatically in this way.

MCN: MCN columnist Kevin Ash recently speculated that the FireBlade could form the basis for a new sports tourer. Is he right? I think he’s entirely correct. The Blade has already formed the basis for a naked bike. And it’s already perfectly capable of getting you to Prague in a day without making you feel like you’ve been beaten up. And it’s light enough for us to add whatever extras and gadgets the customers want.

MCN: So what would replace it as Honda’s range-topping superbike – a V5? I’d love to see a V5 production bike using technology developed for the GP.

MCN: Is that something you’ll be pushing for? If the technology works, it would be wonderful to have it on a road bike.