According to motoblog.it, Benelli sales have been lower than expected worldwide ((Google machine translation). Qiang Jiang, who bought the marque a few years ago, is threatening to close what’s left of Benelli’s Italian-based production and assembly facilities. American Benelli importer Power Sports Factory gave 2strokebuzz an Andretti 150XT (“Velvet” in Europe) to test, you may remember I crashed it in the snow on its maiden voyage, but I’ve put some miles on it lately and it’s a good bike, look for a review (finally!) soon. Surely a good review on a rinky-dink American scooter blog will immediately turn things around for QJ and Benelli.
4 thoughts on “Benelli in trouble?”
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Here’s the Babelfish translation of the motoblog.it post:
“New troubles for Benelli. After the crisis of some year it makes, and the
consequent income of happens them Chinese of Qiang Jiang, this year the
house of Pesaro is facing a new productive and economic stall. Of the 5000
units previewed in 2009, only 1000 those will officially be produced. Many
employee would be already working part Time. In spring Qiang Jiang it had
invested 26 million dollars in the brand of the lion, but to how much it
seems the result in terms of sales have not been those hoped. Now the
Chinese, conscious owners of the very bad situation, could decide to close
the factory or to move the production in China. We attend new
developments.”
My take on it is that QJ will likely move the big V-Twin sportbike production to mainland China and close the Pesaro facility. The QJ Benelli/Andretti scooters have been produced out of mainland China and build-quality is certainly on par with anything Kymco or SYM is putting out.
Now if PSF could get the word out a bit better I think they’d get some traction on the products. Not too many scooter companies out there are offering a 3-year/5,000 mile warranty on their bikes.
Personally I think that if Benelli moves motorcycle production to China; then PSF should take the reigns on distribution. The US Benelli distributor is a non-existent presence.
I also think they should drop mr. mario and embrace the Benelli name completely.
Yes benelli’s us motorcycle distributor is so low profile, I can’t remember who it is.
For clarification, at least as I understand it, all benelli scooters are produced in china, though the euro-market scooters are/were assembled (to some degree) in Italy. I assumed the same was true of the motorcycles, but this article implies that at least some mc models ate still produced in Italy.
looks like Benelli woes continue with thje USA scooter importer PSF…rumors are bleak for PSF……the Andretti/Benelli products are good but, not of Taiwaneese craftsmanship. The Andretti’s were grossly overpriced msrp probably contributed to its demise. Pricing the scooters above that of Yamaha, Honda, Kymco, SYM,Genuine, TGB is a course for disaster. Since the Benelli scooters are built in China there is a low production cost. The Andretti/Benelli imports by PSF were an attempt to price gouge the public. Greed is the answer of PSF’s currendemise…..