I bought my Panther Black Hunk on 4th Jan’08. I didn’t own a bike before that, but I had ridden a few bikes before. Before buying this classy bike I took great pain, though I enjoyed it, in reading reviews of Pulsar 150, Apache RTR, Discover 135, CBZ Extreme & Hunk in Mouthshut & many other review sites. I was confused between Pulsar 150, Discover 135 & Hunk. I rounded off Pulsar’cause I was fed up seeing them all over. I thought Hunk would be too heavy & bulky for me, so I decided to buy Discover 135. I even went to the showroom & gone short on booking one. But I don’t know why after a week or so I finally decided to go for Hunk and oh boy! what a piece of meat that was in the showroom. It was looking splendid, just looking outstanding in front of CBZ Extreme & Karizma.
I gave my bike for 1st service after 550 kms. Before that I was loving every bit of its ride, though gear shifting was little hard & mileage was towards steeper side, just around 45 kmpl, the handling & seating position was very comfortable. I knew that things will only get better after few services. Friends and people around wouldn’t stop gazing at my new bike, they were simply awestruck by its stylish look. I don’t like its tail lamp though, it is just too out of fashion.
I have now ridden my Hunk some 1300 kms and it is performing just too brilliantly without any hitches. You can say that just because I own this bike I am beating my own drums, but the truth is that I cannot find any fault in its performance, reliability & handling. I would sum it up in following points:
PERFORMANCE: Performance of this bike is way ahead of its predecessors, engine offcourse is the key and Honda has proven its worth in Unicorn & CBZ Extreme with the same engine. Engine is as smooth as silk, not noisy at all, but sometimes I do like the sound of Pulsars. I love it when I ride my Hunk with its silky ride. Its engine is so silent that pedestrians can’t hear it even if I am riding besides them or behind them and I have to horn every time. The Horn offcourse is loud, strong & neat and I appreciate Hero Honda for that.
TRANSMISSION: Gear shifting is no problem for me, its just "Makhan maar ke". I was not used to this sporty kind of gear shifting pattern before but I now just race around with it. It is a problem when I am in floaters but that’s not a big deal. It would have been a big deal if the gear shifting was hard. I used to get false neutrals before my first service but not now. Some times I have noticed that I couldn’t shift to lower gears normally after suddenly braking in 5th gear or 4th gear. I don’t know if its usual thing or what. Kindly comment on this if others are also facing the same problem. Other than this its just flawless.
HANDLING: As I have mentioned above, handling is offcourse brilliant whether in steep curve, slow moving city traffic, on fast or empty roads etc. I just love taking out this bike for a ride. I find some difficulty in handling with a pillion rider but that too only in slow moving traffic not while moving in good pace, may be that’s because of the bike’s extra weight. The bike is a little bit heavy but only when it’s stationary. Friends get surprised when they get it to central stand, that’s because its so much easy to do it(great engineering work). Overall handling is fine for me.
LOOKS: Looks are offcourse to die for. Front styling & finishing is nicely done. But I am disappointed with its rear look, it doesn’t gel at all with its overall looks. Designers of Hero Honda have just missed this point.
MILEAGE: 46-50 kmpl, that’s what I am getting now, but it differs from person to person. I ride between 40 & 60 till now. May be I would go to its limit after some more servicing. You have to sacrifice some mileage issues, if you want a power bike so, I have no problem with its mileage.
Though I have given as much information as I could through my experience, I will review it second time if I had missed out on other things.