THE NEW GOLDWING PRODUCTION OR NOT SO NEW
Honda’s new motorcycle mega-factory, built on its huge Kumamoto Site in Japan, is already producing bikes, indeed that’s where the new VFR1200, unveiled in UK February 14th, is being built.
But Honda has announced to its US Dealers that production of GoldWings will not start at Kumamoto until 2011 and that the GoldWings to be made there will be designated a 2012 Model – indicating that the (presumed) new design is unlikely to be unveiled before late 2011.
Quite what this means for UK Wingers remains to be seen because although it is now virtually certain that a new model GoldWing will be on sale somewhere in the world for the 2012 Model Year, it may not be available in Europe until a year or so later, so 2013 – or maybe not at all.
Meanwhile HondaUK has a stock of 200 or so GL1800s in UK, all of which were manufactured at Maryville Ohio before that Factory closed in March 2009, which it will use to fill what will hopefully be a gap rather than the end of a UK model line. These stockpiled GL1800s include some in a new colour (or at least new for UK) called “Pearl Glacier White”. These white bikes were scheduled for release as part of the UK 2010 range but last I heard they werebeing held back and Dealers were not allowed to order them. Only red, silver and blue bikes are currently listed as options on HondaUK’s website, same as last year.
But note that Knutsford Honda’s new Website shows a white GL1800, so maybe they’re more up to date that HondaUK with their information and maybe they can supply GL1800s in fresh colours. Knutsford Honda are also listing two other “new” colours for 2010, one of which is called Mosquito Brown Metallic. I suppose it’s difficult to think of an attractive name for brown as a colour for a GoldWing and adult mosquitos are brownish in colour – but they feed on blood, carry diseases and and have a very short life, so it’s a strange choice. Maybe they were thinking of the de Havilland Mosquito, a WW2 aircraft made out of wood and canvas, but that had a short life too. Fortunately, since the colour is probably being offered throughout Europe, there was also a German WW2 aircraft called the Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito.
The final colour listed by Knutsford Honda for 2010 is Nebulous Black Metallic which sounds, well, a bit nebulous. I wonder if Honda were aware that Nebulous is the name of a Radio 4 show by Baby Cow Poductions set in the year 2099 and parodying Dr Who. Black is hardly a new colour for UK GoldWings but maybe this one is genuinely different.
Honda has in the past used different names for the same colour in different markets, for example Durango Red in the US was the same colour (and had the same Paint Code Number) as Candy Red in the UK. So, Pearl Glacier White as HondaUK’s “new” colour for 2010 (or 2011 or even 2012!) may turn out to be the same as Pearl White, as used for the 2008 Model Year in the US. Mosquito Brown Metallic and Nebulous Black Metallic are probably the same as a colours previously sold in the US too.
The GL1800s currently being offered as new bikes in UK do not have the additional features which appeared in the US for the 2009 Model Year. For example they don’t have remote tyre pressure monitoring, which the 2009 Model Year US GoldWings all have. And the maps on the Navi system of these “new” UK bikes are, until proved otherwise, Garmin’s Version 2008 – which is already way out of date. Garmin, who made the Navi system for Honda, are now on Version 2010 maps for their current range and 2009 Model Year GL1800s, which I saw in the Showrooms over there last Spring, were being shipped with Version 2009 maps.
It’s easy to check which mapset a GL1800 Navi system has; there is a label on the Memory Card on which they are stored and this is accessible under a flap on the Navi system unit in the Trunk. Just lift the flap, pull out the Card (with the ignition off) and read the label. If HondaUK’s 2010 GoldWings have maps on a Compact Flash card labelled “V2008″ they are 2008 Model Year bikes. If they have smaller SD cards with a label saying “V2009″ they are 2009 Model year bikes. My bet is that they are all 2008 bikes.
Incidentally Garmin have stopped supporting the 2 dimensional mapping used by the Navi System, so Version 2009 is the last one anyone will be able to update to, even unofficially. Officially there is no updating facility for the Navi Systems of UK Spec GL1800s at all, but talk to your GoldWing Dealer, he may be able to help.
So one way and another it looks very much like HondaUK’s stockpile of GL1800s are all 2008 Model Year versions. This is probably true of the yet-to-be-released Glacier Pearl White ones too. Yet the List Price of a GL1800 in UK is now a staggering £22,121.
So between now and 2012, or maybe 2013, UK customers are being offered only stockpiled 2008 Model GoldWings and at a price which has gone up by over £3,000 since 2008. HondaUK have also made it very clear that they are no longer interested in supporting the UK GoldWing Club scene at all, although of course to be fair they were very supportive of the 2008 Blackpool Light Parade.
But one way and another UK Wingers might be wondering whether Honda is really interested in a future market for GoldWings in UK. Strategic decisions get made in Naples (HQ of Honda Europe) or in Japan rather than UK. Has a decision been made to neglect GoldWings in UK, unless and until a new model appears or – even worse – for the foreseeable future?
Fortunately at least two UK Honda Dealers are continuing to support both the model and the Club scene to some extent. Knutsford Honda ensured that there was a worthwhile official presence at the 2009 Blackpool Light Parade, by bringing along a HondaUK Exhibition truck and several other attractions but that was more or less it for 2009 and no franchised Honda Dealer was present at the 2009 British Treffen at all. Of course HondaUK are likely to be trying to get all their Dealers to shift some of their remaining GL1800s and they do still have about 200 of them. Given that it’s an open secret that a new GoldWing is on its way, putting the price of leftover two-year old models up by £3,000 seems a funny way of going about shifting them.
Based on the way they’ve done things in the past, Honda is unlikely to release any detail about the specification of the next GoldWing until its public unveiling, so all the rumours you might have been hearing about the nature of the new Wing are just that – rumours. It may indeed turn out to have a 2000cc flat six engine, which someone has claimed to have spotted on a bench testing rig, and it may also look much like a development of the GL1800 in overall shape (described as looking like a GL1800 on steroids) rather than something radically different, but we’ll have to wait and see.
A dual clutch gearbox of the sort the new VFR1200 has is a fairly safe bet but even that isn’t a certainty. There are likely to be plenty of fancy electronics – but will UK Wingers get proper, built-in bike to bike communications at last, which so far we’ve always been denied?
There is lots more information about the new Factory on the internet if you care to search, not least because Honda has been trumpeting its green credentials and the step forward it represents in terms of working conditions for employees. The Factory has special roofing to maximise daylight and minimise the use of artificial lighting and they make use of solar energy too.
There are three main (i.e. mass production) lines and the new VFR is reported to be coming off one of these every 90 seconds. The Factory is capable, if and when its full design capacity is achieved, of making 500,000 bikes per year. Since the Honda motorcycle range extends across far more than three models, Kumamoto’s three mass production lines are presumably time-shared during the production year across various models. There are still other Honda motorcycle factories around the world, notably in India where vast numbers of small motorcycles are made, but except for market-related production facilities like these, Kumamoto seems destined to be Honda’s main motorcycle production site from now on.
GoldWing production in Marysville Ohio was around 8,000 units per year, so if Kumamoto can make the new GoldWing at the same rate as its making VFRs, a full year’s quota of GoldWings will take only 200 hours to complete and the UK’s annual requirement (of 120 or so) could be built in 3 hours! Maybe the Kamamoto workers will be allowed a little longer than 90 seconds to put a GoldWing together.
There are also 15 “Cell Production Lines” at Kumamoto, in which a small team of as few as two workers build motorcycles on the spot, from start to finish. These “Cells” are used for specialised products or specialist variants of production bikes such as police bikes.
If you would like to see something of what goes on at Kumamoto, you can watch a video of the production of the new VFR1200 by clicking here.
In summary Honda is not rushing to start production of GoldWings in its new Japanese factory and there will be a gap of at least two years during which not a single new production GoldWing will have been built anywhere in the world. They have told their US Dealers, for whom the GoldWing is a more important part of the model range than in UK, that this period was needed to transfer the tooling and supplier arrangements from Ohio to Japan.
Meanwhile only stockpiled 2008 model GoldWings are being offered for sale by Honda in UK and the price has gone up spectacularly. As well as putting the price up without explanation, HondaUK are also keeping quiet about the extent to which these stockpiled bikes have out of date Navi systems which they are offering no means of updating. They have also withdrawn from supporting the UK GoldWing Club scene altogether.
While it’s clear that a new GoldWing model is under development for the 2012 Model Year in the US, it remains to be seen whether and when a new GoldWing will be offered in UK. Maybe HondaUK are hoping that Wingers who want to replace their bikes with something more modern will buy the new, shaft-drive VFR1200 instead.
