Honda and Yamaha Vietnam have run out of creativity with popular manual transmission motorbikes.

The popular motorbike segment is increasingly boring with old cars and old designs.

As mentioned in the previous article, at the beginning of the 21st century, the popular motorbike segment in Vietnam really exploded with two typical names, Honda Wave Alpha and Yamaha Sirius, playing a role in regaining market share in the war with Chinese motorbikes, which cost 7-8 million VND, less than 1/3 of the Japanese motorbike models worth selling on the market at that time.

Both have attractive prices, one and a half times more expensive than Chinese vehicles (about 11 million VND), but the quality and brand are like "gold plated". For example, a Wave Alpha with a design almost similar to the Wave 110 imported from Thailand but the price is only 11 million VND, less than half of its predecessor. This price helped make manual motorbikes more popular with people with average incomes in urban areas and well-off people in rural areas at that time, contributing to promoting the brands of the two Japanese giants in the minds of Vietnamese consumers.

However, despite being two gold-making models, both Honda and Yamaha were quite “lazy” to upgrade the Wave Alpha or Sirius. It was not until 2006 that these two models really had a new design version, in which Honda was more active in launching more “high-end” variants such as the Wave S/RS/RSX. Unfortunately, the design of the vehicle has not changed much compared to the “original” except for the RSX line which continues to be sold to this day.

Wave RSX is also the model that Honda has actively "created" the most, but it is like a draft to probe customer tastes and it has only recently become stable. As for Wave Alpha, it was not until early 2017 that Honda launched a notable update since 2006. Unfortunately, the vehicle mainly changed in engine capacity, the design has almost no major changes, only refined to be more sophisticated and convenient.

As for Yamaha, it was not until the launch of the first Fi version in 2013 that the design of the new car really changed. However, in 2014, the Japanese car company had to launch a new version with a sportier, more elegant and masculine design. The regular Sirius version still kept the same design.

It can be said that Sirius Fi was born to compete with the Wave RSX Fi line of its compatriot. Meanwhile, rival Honda since 2014 also added Blade with a design quite similar to the regular Yamaha Sirius. In fact, Yamaha also sold Taurus with the ambition to compete more directly with Honda Wave Alpha but stopped production due to low sales.

During the launch of the new generation Wave Alpha, Honda representatives also shared that they did not dare to bring a design that was too different to the new version because they did not want to follow in the footsteps of the Super Dream model. Previously, the new generation Super Dream with a more powerful engine was "boycotted" because it lost the essence of the Dream II until it was discontinued.

In fact, it is completely understandable that car manufacturers “don’t dare” to innovate on best-selling models that are too familiar to consumers. Because if changes do not “please” consumers like Honda Super Dream, many versions of RSX or Yamaha Sirius Fi 2013 can cause sales to drop sharply, market share falling into the hands of competitors. This is also a rather narrow segment fluctuating in the price range of around 20 million VND, so it is also very difficult to add new car lines if you do not want to compete directly with “homegrown chickens”.

Anyway, up to this point, manufacturers seem to have stopped focusing on popular manual transmission vehicles and instead shifted to scooters, which are booming and are easier to innovate in design than manual transmission vehicles. In the future, users of popular manual transmission vehicles will certainly have to be satisfied with the current design and the highest technology they can own is electronic fuel injection. Because ABS brakes and smart features will be very difficult to equip on a manual transmission vehicle in this price range.