Archive for 'China' Category
The German Roots of Yamaha Motorcycles
19 June 2007With Yamaha recently winning a court case against the Chinese manufacturers who copied the Yamaha scooter design, and even the Yamaha name, and an earlier case against Patriot Motorcycles over the Yamoto brand off road bikes they were selling, it was interesting to look at the history of Yamaha itself.
I was digging again in the [...]
China Builds and Sells Fake Yamaha Scooters
13 June 2007Zhejiang Huatian, China’s largest scooter manufacturer, was fined $1.1 million for selling scooters under the Yamaha brand name.
The Chinese company, Zhejiang Huatian, registered a shell company in Japan’s remote Ishikawa prefecture in 2000 under the same three characters used by Yamaha to render its name in Chinese. This Japanese shell company then signed a licensing [...]
Chinese Motorcycles - Growing Fast
26 March 2007This really isn’t news to anyone, we’ve written about Chinese motorcycles many times but it just seems like things are moving faster now. Here at The Kneeslider, email arrives almost every day from one Chinese company or another announcing their new motorcycles or motorcycle engines. If you follow their link you’ll find one of thousands [...]
Tank Sports E85 Ethanol Fueled Motorcycle
22 March 2007Tank Sports, another one of the many, many Chinese motorcycle companies we’ll be hearing a lot more about in the near future, has tested both a 150cc and 250cc version of their motorcycles for use with E85 ethanol.
After 7 months of research and development along with 3000km of road testing, Tank quality control has inspected [...]
Dodge Tomahawk Replica Update
6 September 2006After our post on the Dodge Tomahawk replica, we received a comment pointing out these were for sale on Alibaba as the X Racer. Well, that’s true, but it gives a misleading idea about the one we had in our post.
I had a phone conversation with Howard Dorf, the builder of the replica in the [...]
Dodge Tomahawk Replica
3 September 2006Doing my usual ebay cruise, this caught my eye, hey, it would catch yours, too, if you saw a Dodge Tomahawk listed. I started thinking Chrysler put their concept bike out there for sale but then I looked a little closer and saw the word replica. What we have here is a half scale Dodge [...]
Selling Motorcycles in China
19 July 2006So many times in the past, we’ve commented on all of the companies charging into China in the hopes of selling to the vast numbers of new, up and coming motorcycle buyers. If sales are flat or rising slowly elsewhere, surely, setting up shop in China will solve that problem. Harley Davidson most recently and [...]
Chinese Restrict Vehicle Exports
13 July 2006Beginning next year, the Chinese are going to restrict the number of vehicle makers allowed to export. It seems they’ve been getting a bad reputation around the world for dumping low quality vehicles in foreign markets. And, wouldn’t you know it, motorcycles are what got their attention in the first place:
The motorcycle industry provides the [...]
