Sep 27, 2016

The Pulsar Pandemonium

I've been wanting to write about this for a pretty long time. But I needed a prod I guess to finally write.

Verbatim from bikeadvice.in:
The company’s Managing Director, Rajiv Bajaj, in an interview to Money Control has revealed that they will launch the 2017 range of Pulsars very soon. The timeline given is “between now and December (2016)“. Without naming any specific model (from the existing range), he informed that these will get “significant changes in both their appearance and performance“.
I've observed the improvement in performance of a Pulsar in the avatar of 200NS. But it's the appearance that has confounded me the most for quite some time.

Let me indulge in the appearances and draw my inferences keeping in mind the announcement above.

Here's the look that folks have come to admire and adopt over time. 


Here's 200NS. Compare this with the one above.

And then here's RS200. All 3 have been amusingly (at least for me) called Pulsars.


And then here's the Pulsar that won't be called a Pulsar any more but that folks have been eagerly waiting for as the big Pulsar and that has also been widely shown and talked about as the biggest Pulsar yet. On earlier occasions it's was called Pulsar CS400. Off late, they were calling it Pulsar VS400. Now we hear it won't be Pulsar at all. And that open's my speculative mind.


So going by appearances, CS400 has a good number of similarities with 200NS. No? Have a look at them yet again. The second pic and this fourth pic.

Now if the motorcycle in the fourth pic isn't called a Pulsar, I would say even the one in the second pic shouldn't be called a Pulsar. And if Pulsar 200NS would no longer be a Pulsar, then the Pulsar as seen in the 1st pic is going to stay the quintessential Pulsar. But we've been given to know that Pulsar will see significant changes in appearance and performance.

If the significant change of appearance in the fourth pic isn't a Pulsar any more, then are we expecting a completely new Pulsar look which isn't yet captured in any of the 4 pics shown above? In which case, the Pulsar 200NS look will also likely be discontinued for its blatant similarity to the non-Pulsar 400VS.

I also don't fathom any great relationship between the appearance in the first pic and the one of RS200 in the 3rd pic. Which means even that isn't the future look of Pulsar either. Which means even that is going to be discontinued. Or am I going way too speculative?

While the earlier Pulsars -150, 180 and 220 - all seem to be well-liked even now, the recent ones and the publicity-garnering pics and announcements have kind of messed up Pulsar, the brand, the look, the essence.

Time to come clean. I would be happy to see a new non-200NS, non-VS400, non-RS200 appearance for Pulsar. I haven't seen any spy-shots so far on these lines, so my thinking could be just very wildly speculative. But I trust Bajaj to spring pleasant surprises more than any other motorcycle company in the country. Let's keep a close watch.

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