Stop buying this bike for Gods' sake. Review on Hero Honda Splendor

I appeal to all the people to avoid buying the Hero bikes - Splendor and Passion. I agree that they are reliable, fuel efficient and affordable. But I wish to remind you that these bikes were launched by Hero Honda in the year 1994  when they were in collaboration with Honda.

Obviously the bikes were designed by Honda. But latter when their partnership broke, Honda started their own company and have become the leading two wheeler company in India . Similar things happened to Bajaj and TVS when their partnership terminated with Kawasaki and Suzuki respectively.

Bajaj and TVS struggled initially to produce bikes on their own, especially the 4 stroke bikes. But they started designing their indigenous bikes. Today they stand on their own leg and they also give very tough competition to Honda and Suzuki.

Discover, Pulsar, Star City, Phoenix and Apache are selling in good numbers. Bajaj is going to become a global automobile company in futuure. Now look at Hero Motor Corp which is claiming to be the world's largest selling two wheeler company. They still sell the Honda designed Splendor and Passion after 15 years. Even their newly launched Maestro have got the Activa engine. With all their resources and money, they are not able to design new bikes to suit the current generation. Even an inexperienced company like Mahindra have produced a Centuro which is liked by people. It is high time that we stop encouraging a company which does not have any ambition to uplift India's reputation in the world by designing Indian bikes that are world class. They just want to make money by selling the "duplicate" Honda bikes.

It is just on the grounds of lack of motivation to produce good products that I criticizing the Hero bikes, even on the aspects of performance, they are inferior to other bikes. When I first drove a splendor in 1995, I was thrilled by its performance. It was different from all other bikes then. But recently when I  happen to ride it again, I felt that the engine is not as smooth as other 100cc bikes. The pick up and mileage are average comparing with Neo or Discover or Sport. Sadly, hero had not refined the engine to make it smoother as done by other companies. The discover engine is much more refined than that of the boxer engine.

Let us encourage Bajaj, TVS and Mahindara so that in future they will compete with Honda and Suzuki at the global automobile industry. The recent sales figures of Hero indicate that there sales is declining. It is high time that they design a new bike to regain the market rather than introducing the same splendor as plus, pro etc.

If you want to buy a good 100cc bike, the better alternates are Honda Neo, Discover 100M, TVS Sport, Mahindra Centuro, Suzuki Hayate.