Now whether it'll play in Peoria remains to be seen, and quite honestly, the jury is still out on whether or not Honda's shot itself in the foot with this one. In fact, I've heard through the grapevine that dealers are reluctant to stock the bikes on spec, hence the snide moniker Do Not Order One, and will only order a bike if the customer plunks down a hefty and presumably non-refundable deposit.
Given the current state of the economy and the DN-01's relatively high price, and it's all the more so when you consider some of the amenities that have been left off the bike, like built in storage compartments and the like, that's understandable. If I were a Honda dealer I have to think long and hard about investing floorplan money in a bike that might languish on the showroom floor ala the PC 800, until the economy turns around, and let's be honest, even then it's no sure bet that the thing will sell.
I think that's a crying shame, not because I have any particular desire to see DN's running hither and yon, whirring across the landscape as it were, but because I think the bike deserves a better shot than it's getting on the street. On the other hand, I have to wonder if Honda really thinks there's a market for the DN, outside of the few diehard techno geeks that are going to be buying the things in essence because they're the motorcycling equivalent of the Segway.
I'd love to have known exactly what was going through the corporate minds at HMC when they decided to bring the DN to market. My best guess is that it was a three-fold strategy. On some level I think it was purely a bit of the technical posturing that Honda does best, a sort of "see what we can build." On another, it gave them a perfect platform to test some new technology, in particular its hydro-mechanical automatic transmission, with a clean sheet design. Mark my words, no pun intended, you'll see that clever bit of cog swapping show up somewhere else in the line up soon enough. Bold experiments in motorcycle design aren't always successful. Consider if you will bikes like the Yamaha TX750, Suzuki Rotary or Honda PC800. All the same, I can't help wonder if Honda is really onto something here, especially if they stick with it and iron out a few details. Maybe instead of Do Not Order, it should be Do Not Overlook.