Inefficient. Review on Hero Honda Passion

I have driven lots of bikes, but the one which I bought was Hero Honda Passion. This was in the year 2000 and hence my bike is more than 5 years old at the time of wrîting this review.

When it was new, it used to give me a better mileage or 60 kmpl and I also used to drive the same with caution and care. But once it hit the third service, my work life involved lots of travel inside the city and with some much to do within the 24 hours, I used to race my mike to save some time. This is when it started developing some issues and still continue to do so.

Despite servicing the bikes only at Authorized Hero Honda Workshops, the bike started to lose it's mileage and stalled at 45-50 Kmpl. I assumed that since I was riding inside the city of Chennai which is chocked with traffic jams and signals, that this was ok. Then I was transferred to Pune and my shift timings were in the non-peak hours of traffic. I used to late in the nights back home and used to come into office by 11:00 am or so. I was overworking and hence did not have the josh to race and hence I was a pacified driver now. Surprisingly, there was no improvement of mileage from the 45 Kmpl within the second year of usage.

Despite attempts by many mechanics, this could not be improved at all and the worst was that it did not have a good break. Whenever a sudden brake was applied, the back tyre used to skid inspite to hitting the front brake as soon as I hit the back brake. To confirm my bad experience with the brakes, a survey in a popular website stated that Hero honda Passsion had the longest drag after braking. At times, I also do the speed test and my bike hits the 85 Kmph mark in around 17 seconds on a straight clear smooth road and takes an awfully slow 7 more seconds to hit 90 Kmph which is the maximum my bike has ever hit.

Overall, I am not very happy with the bike as it aged, though it has never betrayed me (no accidents yet)!!!