[culcune]

Chinamotoworld had an interview months back with one of the main people at Zongshen (it might have been the founder, Zuo Zongshen himself), and he seemed willing to put his money where his mouth was in saying that the entire Chinese industry needed to concentrate on quality, and that Zongshen was going to do so (this interview was right before the international rollout of the RX3).

A few Chinese joint ventures (not necessarily Zongshen except for some Piaggios) produce several mainstream bikes, such as a few of the engines for BMW and I believe KTM, if not the majority of the bike.

I think a $3400 price in the US would be easily justified as pretty much the maximum for this bike once it has been proven as reliable. This could even be the strategy from Zongshen if they are planning a reintroduction to North America? Or a re-label from a joint venture? We will see--or it will be the best Chinese bike in the world that never comes this way?

I do think that Chinese bikes in general better do something soon if they ever want legitimacy in North America. It took years for Korea to produce reliable cars (part of the 'years' was convincing people to accept their cars once they already were reliable), and Chinese bikes have already left a lot of people with bad taste in their mouth (including people who have never even rode one, but were simply pundits of the proverbial "friend of a friend who had one and it broke down just from looking at it...") from the time period starting around 2005 or 2006 when these bikes were getting more popular.

Fancy accessories cost $, however, and this bike is testament to that. Spud, those rides from the past on the old Zongshens, were done easily by ex-pats in China when the price of the GY-2 was about $1k USD in China. These new ones have come a long way from that, including being over 3 x's the price in China!