BMW has taken its own word at its word. When the F 450 GS launched in April, the release called Rs 4.70 lakh an introductory price, and this month the base bike went to Rs 4.95 lakh ex-showroom, with the GS Trophy now at Rs 5.60 lakh. Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 more, depending on the variant. And the sum everyone has reached for since is the same one. It now costs roughly Rs 1.5 lakh more than even the dearest Himalayan 450. Which is the wrong sum entirely.
Allow me to explain.
The number on the tank is doing your thinking for you
I rode the Himalayan 450 at its launch, and I came away properly impressed. It is a big, honest single, 39.47bhp and 40Nm at 5,500rpm, and it wants to be ridden on that fat midrange, short-shifting and letting the motor pull you out of a bad corner. It is sneakily good on a broken road, too. Lovely thing. I am also, mind you, the man who once dropped a stationary bike in a car park with a pillion watching, so weigh my praise accordingly.
The BMW is not a 450. It is a 420cc twin. It makes 48hp, its 43Nm arrives at 6,750rpm, and BMW prints the weight at 178kg. I haven’t ridden it enough. But in my head that is a motor you keep spinning rather than lug, which is very, very different from how the Himalayan asks to be ridden. Two cylinders, the torque higher up the rev range, more power from less displacement. As in, a different kind of motorcycle that happens to share a number. We have been trained by RTO paperwork to treat displacement as a personality. It isn’t, right?
The bike BMW is really pricing against has two cylinders and a Honda badge
Here’s the thing. Want a twin-cylinder adventure bike with a clever clutch? The GS Trophy with its Easy Ride Clutch is Rs 5.60 lakh (Ex-showroom). Honda’s NX500 E-Clutch, a 471cc twin, is Rs 7.44 lakh. Even after the rise, the BMW is Rs 1.84 lakh cheaper. That is not a rounding error. That is a full set of proper riding kit and a very good lid, with change left over for chai. Is the BMW cheap? No. But put it next to the right rival and the hike stops looking like the headline, eh?
That said, I am not letting BMW off lightly. BMW hasn’t said why the price went up. Nothing on the bike changed with it, if the reports are right, and back in June dealers said bookings had stopped once the first lot was spoken for. Which is a fair thing to grumble about, even if the word introductory was right there in BMW’s own release. And the queue is real. One would-be buyer says he rings his dealer every week and has been told not before Diwali. A commuter in Mumbai says he has been quoted about a year.
So what do you do? If a Himalayan 450 is what makes your heart go thump, buy it, and don’t let a BMW roundel make you feel poorer. Chances are you were never really shopping the other one. Is Rs 5.60 lakh a lot for a 420? Yes. Is it a lot for a twin GS with a clever clutch, next to the Honda? Not really. Just compare it with the bike it is actually up against, and ride both before you book. Every time.
Same number on the tank. Different motorcycles. Stop doing the wrong sum.
