When is a 500 Not a 500? – Question of the Day
When it's a 451, d'uh.
In our last Question of the Day, we asked about some of the more… questionable names given to motorcycles (Hondas seemed to come up fairly often in the replies, which is both interesting and somehow not surprising.) I mentioned how it’s generally safer for a manufacturer to stick to a combination of letters and numbers.
While that’s generally true, apart from the occasionally comical practice of tackling on another “R” to make a model sound sportier ( looking at you again, Honda), it does bring the focus onto yet another common pet peeve: motorcycles with misleading numbers in the name.
The latest culprit is Kawasaki’s Ninja 500, which reviewer Sylvia Houston called “borderline egregious”, as its Twin-cylinder engine’s displacement is only 451cc. Along with the Z500 and the Eliminator (which is also marketed as a 500 in Europe), we have a range of models all rounding up instead of going by the more accurate and marginally less marketable 450.
This example is more than what we typically see, but Kawasaki is hardly alone. Honda’s 500s are actually 471s, and the Ducati Hypermotard 698 Mono is actually a 659.
But maybe it’s just me. Like men listing their heights on their online dating profiles, maybe we should come to expect a bit of embellishment, and can look past a bit of marketing fluff. After all, it’s not the size that matters, it’s what you do with it.
So, for our Question of the Day, does it bother you when model names are slightly misleading, or do you just accept that marketing is part of the game?
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Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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What gets me is when manufacturers go the other route, like Kawasaki with the Z900, which sports a 948cc engine. Why can't they just call it a 950---the Z950? Is it less marketable, are they afraid of competing with the liter bikes?
I think Kawi should have gone with 450 for the sake of marketing honesty, and Ducati should have used 660, which I think sounds better than 698. Why an odd number like 698, anyway? Why not 700?