FEW INDIAN-market bikes have managed to get as much worldwide coverage as TVS’s Apache RR 310. Why? Because it’s basically a sports version of the BMW G310 that TVS builds under contract for the German firm.
And unsurprisingly, it hasn’t taken a huge leap for onlookers to suggest that, as such, could be a template for a future baby BMW sports bike – a G310RR, effectively.
But now reports from India suggest that the Apache RR 310 hasn’t been met with quite the sales success that was hoped for.
According to Indian websites, just 351 of the machines were sold in July, down from a peak of 983 in March and well behind the figure needed to meet the projected 10,000 units per year that were expected to find buyers. To achieve that, the firm needed to sell 833 per month at the bike’s launch, but it now needs to increase that to more than 1300 per month if it’s to hit the target this year.
Why would such a highly-anticipated, well-publicised bike fail to find buyers? The price is probably part of the problem. While the RR’s cost – equivalent to around £2500 – might sound pretty cheap to our ears, in India it’s an expensive machine. However, the similarly-expensive KTM RC390 is reckoned to have sold around 1600 units per month.
