Chinese in the 2011 Dakar

[ChinaV]

If these guys are on Jincheng-stickered Yamahas, then now I'm even more confused.....

Nanjing Jincheng Motorcycle Co., Ltd, the registered capital of which is RMB 80 million, is a subsidiary of Jincheng Group, its controlling shareholder. It formally began production in September, 1997. With an annual designing capacity of 200,000 motorcycles, it is responsible for manufacturing motorcycles of the model using the technology transferred by Jincheng Group and Japan Suzuki Motor Corporation. At present, its four styles of “Suzuki” brand motorcycles, namely SJ50QT、SJ110、SJ125T、SJ125 and “Suzuki” GF 125 engine using state-of-the-art technology are deeply favored by the domestic and overseas markets as well as the consumers for their high quality, outstanding performance and novel styles.

The company now has a group of professional high quality employees, who are technically skilled, good at management and knowledgeable. All the employees have accepted the technological training and research of Japanese Suzuki Motor Corporation.

What am I not getting?

Red Bull makes sugar water with caffein, yet you will find their logos covering many bikes. Although Jincheng is a motorcycle company, I haven't seen anything from the web-o-sphere indicating they built their own Dakar machine from the ground up. Plenty of motorcycle companies in China have joint interests with Suzuki... Haojue and QingQi come to mind. So I'm guessing that Jincheng makes a bunch of Suzuki clones, but has deep enough pockets (and the passion) for creating a Dakar team. Good on them, it's nice to see a genuine interest in the sport, and I'm glad they're doing well. Their choice of a Yamaha based Dakar bike probably has nothing to do with their day to day business.

The embarrassing fact about those fancy Chinese corporate profiles, is when you read about the money, capacity, and technology they have access to, yet they are so tied up in building 125cc peasant mobiles. These Chinese factories have millions of dollars of equipment and personnel at their disposal, yet are unable to produce a single model that has rocked the motorcycle world. Kind of sad when you see all these tiny little shops in Europe or America creating works of art with barely a penny to their name.

Cheers!
ChinaV