Recently a close friend of mine purchased the Shine. I was pretty annoyed with his decision to purchase a product as ’expensive’ and as ’plain’ as the Shine. His decision he said was based on a long test ride he had of the Shine, which had tilted the balance in Shine’s favour. To convince me he left his Shine standing outside my door for a day.......
I picked up the keys of the Shine and decided to give it a try so as to be able to chalk down the reasons I felt Shine wasn’t a good decision.
First look at the Shine grudgingly made me agree the fit and finish of the Shine was better than the competition and it did not look as bad as it seems in all the print ads that we see......... Black Shine with a Red Honda logo pretty okay........... The Shine feels a little bigger than the rest of the 125cc category too. Plain it is but not boring at all, though the stickering is not at all to my taste......
I insert the key and kick the motor...........one smooth kick is all it takes and we are off.
The shine is pretty quick of the block and we are soon heading towards the chandni chowk area where the traffic is as always choc a bloc.
The shine’s pick up is much better than the other 125ccs and I soon realise that the bike has another very useful feature which allows me to kick start the bike in any gear, which my friend later explained to me is called a primary gear..... The Shine is fastest of any red light that we need to stop at and the amazingly silent engine allows me to pull the bike from even as low as 20kmph with the 4th gear engaged. The gears are precise and not once in the heavy traffic was I able to get a false neutral, hard as I may try.
With claimed mileage around 65kmpl, I do believe Shine like Unicorn would be pretty close to the mark.
The seating position is quite relaxed which makes riding comfortable and stress free.
I finish my work and am back on my way home, it is already way past 10 pm and roads are pretty empty, I decide to open the throttle and the Shine easily dances past the 85kmph mark before I hit a red light. The brakes are pretty responsive too with the front wheel disc brakes doing very well in stopping this motorcycle real quick. I turn to check tarmac skid lines to see a straight line as if made with a ruler and pencil, very good!.
I make good time reaching home and again grudgingly decide that out of 10 if I need to award shine nos. it would be something near 8.5. and for me that is nearly perfect.
My recommendation to all, most of the products in the 125cc segment are good, Shine annoyingly with its plain looks is just a little better.