Olé!

[Turkina]

My '03 is from Japan but lots of "Jap" bikes are built in Europe, notably most Hondas of 500cc and over are built in Italy a lot of smaller Hondas, 125cc and under come from Brasil. The best-ever-selling Honda 90 is made in almost every third world country you can think of, or a very close clone is.

In UK we have Renault and Citroen factories, formerly Crysler, formerly Hillman factories plus "French" cars design and concept facilities. My Nikon cameras are made in Japan but all the accessories and bits and bobs come from China.

It's called globalisation, it's shafting all our jobs but keeps prices down in Walmart.

Japan doesn't have a market for bikes between 401cc and oh, maybe 750cc.  Except for the 600's in race trim.  Has to do with the licensing restrictions, where you need to pass an extra part of the exam to get your 'big bike' (>400cc) license.  It makes sense to build middleweight bikes in Europe since that's where the main market is located.

Anyways, I think a bunch of trained monkeys can put GSes together, since they are such old tech!  :lol:

[niteshade]

It makes sense to build middleweight bikes in Europe since that's where the main market is located

good point!  I hadn't thought of it that way... no need to pay import duties or shipping or whatever.  And Spain likely has the cheapest labor costs of western Europe.

Any idea why Americans don't dig middleweight bikes?  Is it just our pervasive Bigger is Badder mentality?

[Alphamazing]

Any idea why Americans don't dig middleweight bikes?  Is it just our pervasive Bigger is Badder mentality?

Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

[Cal Price]

Indeed the Japanese market centres on 250s and 400s, apart from the GP and Superbike racing scene. I believe this is largely because of local laws and insurance restrictions.

Like nightshade said, you can't stop globalisation so in a sense we just have to get used to it. In twenty/fifty years time when China is the world's biggest economic and possibly military power as well some little African or central asian former russian republic will be tooling up to do unto China etc,....

As for Bill Gate's philanthropy I think it pitches between the figures mentioned of you look on a global scale and filter out that part which some would describe as enlightened self interest which is no bad thing for donor or recipient. I suppose from Bill's perspective if 60% of Africans and Asians are on the breadline they aint going to be buying much windows software are they. He does give on a global scale and all in all it has to be a big plus.

At the moment Walmart in U.S. (Asda in U.K) is not looking to Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia for it's customers, just it's suppliers. On the other side of that coin Tesco, UK's global marketeer very like Walmart in some way is expanding it's stores and customer base in a very big way in Eastern Europe and S.E. Asia seeing them not only as future economic powerhouses but as big markets as well.

That's globalisation, it will even out sometime, in the meantime of course all supermarkets all over the world can shaft their own domestic farmers but that's another thread.

[juno]

My 2002 says made in Japan.