I was shocked to see and read that China has been producing motors for brands like Suzuki, CF moto, KTM Piaggio and BMW. They are being held to higher QC and material resourcing standards for these engines and still are able to manufacter them at such low cost. Which is odd, concerning, a bit shocking, but also cool. Hear me out here. I am not going to start praising them for their glorious engineering skills just yet. 20 years ago, if I told you china was going to make good motorcycle engines, you would have called me a communist boot licker and sent me to my room and no gamecube for a month. But, knowing what I know now, I actually am kind of impressed. I know, I know, it only took High quality Control standards to finally make them build something that is a complete waste of what is equivilent to high end-soon to be scrap metal. But, with that being said it seems like the engineering standards in china are getting better and I don't know how to think about this.
I was recently looking at motorycle brands that I saw on my last trip to Nicaragua and there was a brand there that so many people were driving called ''Genesis''. Not the auto company*, need to make that clear. This brand is not that new, but not that old. I saw so many different makes and models down there and I noticed that they were all small single cylinder 90-200cc motors. most of them 4 stroke, carburator, single cyl. 125-150cc. However, they also have a few scooters that were CVT driven, which is probably* a GY6 engine (which I also did not know is chinese designed). I say probably, because I can't find any detailed information as to where they get their engines from, but knowing how much Nicaragua imports from China, I would assume the motorcycles are getting their engines from there and probably a few other peices, while the technicians assemble everything in Nicaragua. Kinda makes sense too, you really can't drive fast in Nicaragua and there is no demand for the same engine displacement we see in motorycles for countries like America or Canada.
But if Chinese manufacturing plants can now enter the markets to start building engines for brands we trusted for Quality, like European bikes or Japanese companies...does that mean I'm wrong and Chinese engines are no longer laughable? I know getting a chinese motorcycle is probably not going to happen for myself anytime soon. But these engines are getting good reviews. Then again, some of the chinese brands we see, get absolutely trashed by riders because of the slapped together junk that they are. Perhaps China is now making hit or miss stuff? Maybe thats as far as it goes?
Also kind of interesting to see China getting its footing into MotoGP again.
