Hardly a news worthy story. Incidently my uncle bought a chinese scooter a few years ago for $1500 and he has done over 25000km in it. The guy that services it can't belive its still going and said its the highest km one he's ever seen. He said 5000km is a reasnonable life span for one.
danni_2254,
Dec 8, 12:45pm
Thats not bad, but I mean $600! What do you expect! Theres even some on here for $300 .
sifty,
Dec 8, 12:51pm
yeah but to be fair they said they knew it was a cheapy and they weren't expecting a marvel, just more than a couple of hours use out of it.
doggitt,
Dec 8, 12:55pm
and they got two replacements. Crap happens.
danni_2254,
Dec 8, 12:56pm
Whats the bet it wasn't properly set up/ run in!
crzyhrse,
Dec 8, 3:48pm
'mapman' should be in shortly to extoll the many virtues of chinese vehicles.
kazbanz,
Dec 8, 3:53pm
600 would buy you a peewee 50 which never breaks down. The failures described dont sound like neglectthey sound like "stuff happens" type incidents--ie a busted spring in the clutch.
crzyhrse,
Dec 8, 3:57pm
Perhaps the most disturbing thing in that article is George's involvement with them.
tigertim20,
Dec 8, 4:12pm
totally agree. People still think that a brand new motorbike for $600 is better than a second hand bike for $600 - when the second hand one would have cost 3k+ when new. Gahh, THUD!
mapman,
Dec 8, 7:33pm
crzyhrse, you and I know the Chinese manufacture most of the more popular and reliable Motorbike brands available. These include Kawasaki, Suzuki, Honda and Yamaha. Nothing much more to say really other than buy one of these top brands made in China and you should have a good run. They also manufacture the worse possible Motorbikes known to man and if you buy something at a cheep price, guess what, it??
gunhand,
Dec 8, 8:00pm
Is there not a difference between, manufactured if china to japanese specs and standards as apposed to manufactured in china to chinses specs. Some really good stuff comes outs china if made to the correct spec/standard which we know they can do when asked to by say, Kawasaki.
mapman,
Dec 8, 8:03pm
The Chinese can manufacture to any spec you want, problem is NZ importers are like The Warehouse buyers, they are price driven and will go for the best price and not the best Bike.
studio1,
Dec 9, 12:04am
Unreasonable to expect anything from a china bike except for it to fall apart or never go again (assuming it even went in the first place, many don't).
pollymay,
Dec 9, 12:32am
Chinese tolerances are shyte on everything, it's not till they have a parent company over their head they pull finger. No name chinese = problems. Once you use an external company like say eagle rods, scat, tomei etc (they all use CAT POWER rods) they do the finishing and final quality control, left entirely to china the things are crap.
Other companies don't just use china for cost, the EPA in america as well as unions and safety regulations means it's not only cost effective but actually possible to produce things without everyone else sticking their opinion in your arsehole.
jsbike,
Dec 9, 6:11am
yeah he would have been far better with a 2nd hand decent brand. my mates kid rides a suzuki jr50 that was bought for $1200, the thing is it was bought for $1200 over 20 years ago, its the same jr50 my mate 1st learned to ride on!
wilgil,
Dec 9, 6:21am
I would say that the reason that the Warehouse have had so few returns is because the majority of these bikes will have been bought to go under the Christmas tree. I bet there are going to be a lot of irrate parents at the service desk for the Boxing Day sale.
gusthe1,
Dec 9, 7:43am
When I saw these i wondered if the kawasaki importer would have a claim considering the chinese bikes have a similarity to a kawasaki dirt bike. No way would kwaka want an association with those things at the warehouse.
thejazzpianoma,
Dec 9, 8:21am
You raise a good point. Its insane that we live in a country where we waste money on stupid unworkable laws against downloading/pirating (which I don't condone BTW) yet we let illegal knock offs be imported hand over fist. Not saying this is necessarily the case here ( I havn't looked in to it ) but it could be.
We should not be allowing Great Wall to be imported here when they as a company are guilty of theft of billions of dollars worth of Research and Development. It stinks.
richardmayes,
Dec 9, 8:30am
That's almost as bad as an $18,000 British bike.
crzyhrse,
Dec 9, 9:29am
Japanese designs with some componentsmanufactured under tight Japanese quality control in Japanese owned plants located in China vs. designed & manufactured in China, by Chinese to Chinese standards. sorry, no comparison whatsoever.
thejazzpianoma,
Dec 9, 9:47am
+1 you know how mapman loves to blur the lines. This is just like how he was making out that Fiat were getting the Chinese to design/build all of their engines when really there was just one small overseas local market project for a very limited run of vehicles. The man lives in lala land but its fun to wind him up.
crzyhrse,
Dec 9, 9:54am
Everyone has at least one use.
mapman,
Dec 9, 3:17pm
Either way you want to look at it, they are made in China are they not cryhrse. Not to mention ???most??
mapman,
Dec 9, 3:20pm
Jazz fizz off and go pick a war with somebody at your level, your just to easy for me man. By the way, if the Chinese have nothing to do with Fiat in your own words, then you can??
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