One of the issues in motorcycle business is that young people’s interest in motorcycles is declining year by year. Accordingly, there has been a need to consider a new model targeting such young generations. To respond this need, Honda has started to create a motorcycle design category that has exceptional features and does not belong to any of the conventional motorcycle categories to explore new motorcycle market. The basic features of the design structure was decided as “Low & Long,” and the descriptions of “Massive front styling” and “Cockpit position” were coined as two keywords. Actual methods to materialize these design concepts in a real motorcycle were investigated by having serious involvement in structural design work as well to take practical vehicle requirements into account.Following this process, the model of the NM4 was brought into mass-production and it was confirmed, through the numbers appeared in the responses on Twitter, that our objective to get a wider recognition among customers not currently using motorcycles was achieved.
Article of Honda R&D Technical Review Vol.27 No.1 (1 - 7)