Harley-Davidson X440 Unveiled in India

[Hugh Janus]

Developed, built and for sale only in India will be the brand-new Harley-Davidson X440. (Harley-Davidson/)

Back in 2020 Harley-Davidson completely rethought its position in the vast Indian motorcycle market. After a decade of chasing sales there—extending to assembling bikes in the country and even developing the Street 500 specifically for the Indian market—Harley announced in September 2020 that it was pulling out of the country. Just a month after that announcement, in what seemed like a screeching U-turn, Harley inked a deal with India’s Hero MotoCorp to let it take on distribution of its motorcycles and to “develop and sell a range of premium motorcycles under the Harley-Davidson brand name.”

The Harley-Davidson brand has been licensed to Hero MotoCorp for India. (Harley-Davidson/)

The Harley-Davidson X440 is the first of those Hero-developed bikes. A Harley-Davidson that isn’t just being manufactured in India but was also designed there, using the Harley name under license. It’s a solution that seems jarring on the surface, allowing another bike company to use what’s arguably the most famous name ever seen on two wheels, but from another perspective it’s a win-win agreement for both companies involved. For Hero—already the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer by volume, and with a dominant market share in India—there’s the appeal of a move upmarket, where profit margins get wider. For The Motor Company, which has already appreciated the difficulty of getting a foothold in India, even going to the extent of developing bikes specifically for that market with the Street 500, it’s a low-risk way to get riders in one of the world’s largest motorcycle markets onto bikes wearing its badges.

It’s an arrangement that’s not entirely dissimilar to the one Triumph has with Bajaj. Just as Hero has taken on Harley’s distribution and sales network in India and is developing new bikes to carry the Harley name there, Bajaj has done the same for Triumph’s Indian operation, and will soon release the first of a range of Triumph-branded single-cylinder machines.

Power comes from a small-displacement air-cooled single around 440cc. (Harley-Davidson/)

Neither Hero nor Harley has revealed technical details of the X440, but pictures of the finished bike have been released. It was teased back in April, as the HD 4XX, when staged “spy” photos were delivered to the Indian press, and now the official images confirm that it’s going to be called the X440, suggesting a capacity of around 440cc. The “X” nomenclature matches Harley’s other tie-in project, with China’s Qianjiang, which now manufacturers the parallel-twin X350 and X500 models, both based on existing engines and frames used in the QJMotor and Benelli model ranges but wrapped in Harley-specific styling. Those bikes are aimed at China and other Asian markets, while the X440 takes a different approach for India.

The Harley-Davidson X350 is built by Qianjiang for Asian markets. (Harley-Davidson/)

Unlike the relatively sophisticated X350 and X500, with their liquid-cooled twin-cylinder engines, the X440 has an air-cooled single—a format that’s still very much the favored design in India. Simplicity can be seen as an advantage, not a drawback; after all, Royal Enfield’s age-old 350cc singles have been bestsellers in India for years and are likely to be the X440′s main target.

Despite the lack of official specifications, there are enough clues to make educated guesses as to the bike’s performance. The rev counter reads to 8,000 rpm, for instance, suggesting peak power will arrive somewhere in the 7,000 rpm region, and a look at other, similarly sized air-cooled singles suggests something in the region of 35 hp is as much as we can expect. That might not be much, but since Enfield’s 350cc singles, as used in the Hunter, Classic, and Meteor, are sub-20 hp, it’s more than enough to be competitive. However, this part of the market is about to get much hotter, with Royal Enfield developing a new Hunter 450 model and Triumph on the verge of announcing a range of Indian-made singles in a similar capacity class.

The X440 is expected to compete for luxury buyers in India. (Harley-Davidson/)

The chassis is as simple as you’d expect, with a traditional twin-shock design, but there is an upside-down fork and a single ByBre front brake caliper. ByBre is Brembo’s low-cost brand, and along with the Harley name and details like LED lighting and LCD instruments, it means the X440 is toward the luxury end of the mainstream Indian motorcycle market.

One thing that’s sure is that the X440 won’t be sold here. The Indian market is large enough on its own to support the design and development of bikes specifically for it, and the deal between Harley and Hero is specific that the Hero-designed Harleys are for India alone. As such, fears that the Harley-Davidson brand could somehow be tarnished by the existence of a small-capacity, affordable, low-performance bike are likely to be unfounded.

Source

[XTreme]

Indian shit for @Buckster

[boboneleg]

That won't pull a feckin trailer

[Buckster]

Fuck off!

[Six30]

11 hours ago, boboneleg said:

That won't pull a feckin trailer

the rider would pull a man

[busabeast]

13 hours ago, Buckster said:

Can't wait, just what I'd been dreaming about since I started riding men