| General information | |
|---|---|
| Model: | Hero Honda Karizma R |
| Year: | 2008 |
| Category: | Sport R |
Introduction:
With the 223cc, 17.76bhp, 18.35Nm Karizma, Hero Honda has once again wrested the title of king of the performance hill (it helped create with its CBZ some four years ago) from the Bajaj Pulsar 220 which held it convincingly for over a year and a half.The bike which is not only quicker and faster than its competition but also handles, steers and brakes like no other bike in the country - today.
There I was flat out on the Bangalore - Mysore highway, in a very good frame of mind after testing the Karizma and heading back to base. The new 223cc bike from Hero Honda had impressed me truly , not beccause it had clocked the quickest acceleration and roll-on times plus also recorded the fastest speed for a present day production motorcycle but because the bike was in too mellow a state of tune and therefore had tremendous potential to perform even quicker and faster!
With this thought paramount in my mind and the bike really zinging that day in the fourth and fifth cogs for much of the 120km run, I guess it was all going too much to my head as I came upon an open stretch of road with a slight uphill section curving to the left. What I saw was no traffic when all of a sudden a cyclist with a large trunk crawled out of the woodwork and suddenly decided to do his variation on the twirl perfected by John Travolta in Grease but right in my intended flight path. While it looked pleasing and aesthetic in the film, it was anything but so on the road. While Travolta and team delighted the audience, here the audience suddenly had his heart in his mouth. The one bit which is obviously a sore point (of just a few such) on the new Hero Honda was proved no end and I am referring to the inadequacy of the horn because I am sure the cyclist never heard it and in the whirl of those few seconds it didn't ring a bell in my ears as well!
But in case you are thinking about a stunning crash scene as in Grease there was no such thing. The superb dynamic balance of the Karizma with its highly pleasing weight distribution and suspension geometry came to my rescue as did the fantastic 276mm dia disc brake up front (courtesy a new player in the motorcycle brake market - Tata Yutaxa). A slight squeeze on the front brake lever, a rapid downshift to third from fifth, a blip on the throttle and the gyrating bicyclist was passed with metres to spare and thankfully no contact. For a moment I thought it was all going to end in tears but when I had got my breath back and was motoring sedately (if cruising at 110kmph can be called that on our roads), I once again began to appreciate what a fantastic bike Hero Honda had produced. In fact by the time I had ended doing the test the Karizma had done enough to wipe out the memories of the CBZ which had promised much but had failed to deliver, and it further emphasised that it was the best bike ever made by Hero Honda but with tremendous potential yet lurking to be unleashed should the competition cook up some goodies on similar lines.
It is a different way to start a road test report but then this is a different bike in itself and unlike any from Hero Honda.With the Karizma, I think that they finally have made a bike which has the potential to silence doubters like yours truly but here again they have failed because instead of silencing they have everyone of our performance driven staffers yelling out in glee! Sometimes 'even when you win you lose' sort of syndrome (works the other way round as well) but better for Hero Honda to be saddled with such than nothing at all.
The need to do a Karizma!
The CBZ was the very first bold move by the leader in Indian motocyles to offer a performance offering. On its own, the CBZ was a standout and even today in the aesthetic sense and when ergonomics are taken into account, nothing comes close to it. Sadly its weaknesses in power delivery, harsh engine straining at its top end and a slight handling imbalance when at full chat were shown up when first the Fiero from TVS came up and impressed with it engine and fluid power delivery and then the Bajaj Pulsar came and zapped all to show what all round performance was all about.
Mind you the Pulsar was yet just 220cc and Hero Honda knew that it had to make a bike appeal to those who lusted after the Pulsar but wanted more. Also the Pulsar being much too single minded in its focus - that of being a super streetfighter - there was always the opportunity of someone coming up with a proper conventional sportsbike. Hero Honda had been given the basic Honda building block of a strong bottom end which could employ cylinder blocks varying in capacity from 133cc right up to 223cc and this modular unit was already used by the company to come up first with the CBZ and then with the Ambition. The frame was similarly versatile for being used all across this displacement spectrum and using these and understanding where customer preference was headed, the Honda boffins alongwith the marketing men from Hero Honda came up with the Karizma. I have always maintained that a good quarter-litre bike could be the best useable machine in the Indian perspective and maybe this thought was also prevalent in the minds of the Hero Honda team when they were developing the Karizma. As it has turned out, the bike is still 27cc shy of the 250cc mark but it is a good step towards getting there.
Style & Build
Game attempt to be modern but solidly put together.
The first things which dominate the senses once you lock eyes on the Karizma are its front end and the overall mass of the bike. The front fairing is a piece of art when viewed from certain angles and looks real rakish and sporty, being a scaled down rendering of the unit adorning the VFR800, right down to the design and cut of the headlamp. But if you even deviate a bit to any other side from its most pleasing angle, the ungainliness creeps in thanks to the side panels on which I frankly thought not much was done. The fixed fairing's meshing with the tank is blemishless but it is the style which has got jumbled for it just doesn't comes across harmoniously. This is one of the biggest let downs of the Karizma for as you move from the tank backwards, the style accents are there in the traditionally pleasing Honda sports bike fashion.
The tank with its sculpted knee recesses adds to the great biker feel as does the super saddle which makes the straddling posture so very inviting. Certain elements of the side panels running right to the tail of the bike look like they have been seen before (on the Ambition if you please) but Hero Honda has excelled in using different paint shades and finishes on the plastic and metal parts to contrast and gell well to accentuate the mechanical as aesthetically as possible. The finish on the engine (head, barrel and crankcase covers), the pseudo plastic cover denoting a mock-frame rail meging into the side panel, the black powder coated exhaust pipe running into the de-rigeur large diameter end can, the black-finished springs (on the shock absorbers) and also the mag wheels do take care of the aesthetic end of the bike in a big way.
The front headlamp is a great job and Hero Honda brings modern day superbike style to India with it. The instrument panel with its three dial layout (large speedo in the centre flanked by the rev counter on the left and the digital read-out roundel on the right) is well conceived and treated but what spoils the visual appeal is the lack of shrouding at the top yoke area, daylight streaming through there. This detail should have been shrouded and maybe Hero Honda will take us up on this positively.
Performance:
The Karizma comes across as the quickest and the fastest Indian-built production motorcycle i've have ever tested (the Yamaha Drag Star which goes on sale in India later in the year is a CBU and doesn't therefore count here). What is praiseworthy is that this is a bike which has been built singlehandedly to perform but with good manners and pleasing power delivery rather than being a firebreather of a motor. The higher cubic capacity always helps and this it has done but the engine's new found willingness to rev clean and sharply whenever the rider twists the throttle reveals a whole new direction for a Hero Honda engine.
The engine has a great new zeal to spin away in a strong linear manner with torque making it haul away from rest - a very important factor considering its 150kg kerb weight. With our man Aspi in the hot seat during the performance tests and data acquisition, the Karizma just sizzled away to the top of the performance hill, edging out the present incumbent - the Pusar 220 - from its perch.
In the acceleration tests, the 220 Pulsar with its kerb weight (148 kg) gets off the line quicker and is ahead uptill the 50kmph mark but from there on the Karizma ups the pace, gets into its thurst mode and opens up a gap which keeps on getting larger and larger. The Karizma took 4.7 seconds to go from standstill to 60kmph and in the crucial 0-100kmph run she took 14.5 seconds. Comparative times for the Pulsar 220 were 4.8 seconds and 16.5 seconds respectively. In the standing quarter mile acceleration run, the Karizma once again showed who is the new king of the hill, recording an 18.83 second time with a 109.95kmph terminal speed.
In all these runs, what was manifest about the Hero Honda was its strong consistent thrust, not seeming to run out of steam even with our repeated acceleration cycles and also not losing its edge in tune. This, for me was, more than the obviously high performance the bike delivers, a stand-out detail especially since I was so hooked up on the CBZ but which disappointed with its lack of consistent performance. Even in the roll-ons the Karizma continues it rule-all sweep and in the top speed department we have to give credit to Hero Honda for sticking its neck out and claiming a 125kmph because the Karizma in our dual direction top speed run recorded 125.6kmph! It doesn't get closer than this and the only area in which we couldn't match up to the manufacturer's claims was in the zero to 60kmph time of 3.8seconds. Till the time we develop a 60kg tester (or see anyone from our lot resorting to an impossible weight loss programme) to be as good and effective as our 90kg genius Aspi we do not see anyone from our end coming close to Hero Honda's claim in this performance test. But then the Karizma has performacne all across its spectrum and in every respect it comes out on top, stops all discussion doesn't it?
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