HONDA's GLOBAL motorcycle sales in the first half of its financial year to30 September fell by 11.7 per cent year-on-year to a mere 4.58 millionunits.
But this drop wasn't serious, the company claimed, because it was dueto a reduction in the number of knocked-down kits shipped to variousjoint-venture operations in Asia as more of them are now sourcing partslocally and building complete bikes.
Its two-wheeled turnover for the period was actually up by 16.2 per cent to £3.17bn with operating profit for the sector soaring by 50.7 per cent to £288m. However, most of this improvement was due to the positive effect of the depreciation of the yen and Honda has admitted that it also had to absorb increased sales costs  discount price promotions, in other words in the troubled US motorcycle market.
