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As we wait for the R3 to finally hit dealer rooms, I thought it would be interesting to try to elucidate how successful it will be by looking at the launch of its little sibling the Yamaha R25 in Indonesia.
In Indonesia the R25 has met with sales success far more than what was expected. In the first 25 hours that the bike was available for ordering, 2,800 bookings were made. That is about a quarter of the expected 12,000 sales for the entire year. Needless to say, that is far more than Yamaha could have hoped for. A R25 can make its way through the assembly line in just 3 minutes, but that isn't fast enough to satisfy demand for Indonesia. Consequently, export of the R25 has been delayed to keep up with domestic demand.
Now let me link this discussion back to the R3. Despite having less displacement, the R25 still competes with the Kawasaki Ninja 300 and the Honda CBR300R. The R3 will be competing against these bikes when it gets released in as well. I think given the similar cast of competitors in both markets, and also considering the R3 will have more displacement than the R25, we could see a greater demand than expected for the R3 when it does finally make it into showrooms.
Do you think that there is any more information that we can glean about the R3 by looking into R25 sales? How successful do you think that the R3 will be considering the success of the R25 in Indonesia?