Sep 16, 2011 05:23 PM
6432 Views
I am a proud owner of 2007 model silver Unicorn. This review is like the least I can do for expressing how satisfied I am with the product.
Before I owned a Honda, I used to ride Bajaj products, although they were good in their accord, I would not discriminate or badmouth them, because they did serve their purpose. The first time I heard about the Honda unicorn was through the media, there was a lot of hype about the launch, however when it was actually launched, it did not honestly meet up to the current market expectations. For instance it lacked what the competition had to offer in terms to creature comforts which were like, Electric Start, Tripmeter, Parking lights, side stand open warning( this one specifically when compared to Bajaj Pulser), Still it had a gem of an engine, a butter popcorn machine for that matter(J) . I had never been used to such smoothness as mentioned before I had never ridden a Honda or even a bike with a truly international engine. Now getting down to the everyday experience. Till Date my bike has clocked 57, 000 kms of crunching the city miles and quite rarely the highways. and it still as smooth if not less than it was when I first rode it from the showroom. all I have had to spend on it was the engine oil and the brake shoes of both the front disk brakes and the rear drum types and yes two of the major spare parts I had to change were the the chain sprocket set at around 30K kms and the tyres at 50K kms.
When ever I wait in a traffic signal next to some of the new bikes like bajaj pulsar, TVS apache, HH hunk with all their gizmos, like LCD speedometer, backlit switchgear( one of the most ridiculous features on an indian bike ive seen so far), and abbreviated decals like MIG, GRS, RTR, ABCD, XYZ for which I get rather funny meanings which I rather not disclose for obvious reasons. I tell myself how good are their engines? would they still sound and perform like a Honda Engine once they coverup 50K kms? I doubt. My fundamentals are simple, the heart of a bike is its engine, rest all are secondary(Brakes ofcourse are as important as engines) In a way I feel that honda has got their basics right.
All said and done, I really would not mind a LED Back lite, ABS, Digital Speedo etc which I believe has more or less been addressed by the Unicorn Dazzler or forthcoming models depending on where the competition goes. I might even be wrong on the engine refinement part when it comes to other competing brands. What I am happy with is that end of the day the customer wins thanks to bench markers like Honda for the engine part, TVS and bajaj for getting in modern gizmos on bikes and so on.
GodSpeed!
