After UM, Cleveland Motorcycles Stops Production In India

Earlier this month, UM Motorcycles had decided to shut down its India operations. Now though, Cleveland Cyclewerks is the second “American” manufacturer who has called it quits in India. Now, there was hardly any news regarding the motorcycles (Ace and Misfit) ever since they were launched in India last year, so it isn’t surprising if you don’t know about the bike maker. 

The company had set up a manufacturing plant in Pune, but the facility was hardly functioning for the last few months, leaving its workers in a quandary. With the new safety norms that kicked in earlier this year, manufacturers had to equip their products with ABS/CBS. However, Cleveland missed that deadline and neither of its motorcycles were updated to adhere to the new safety norms. It was reported that the manufacturer was working on ABS variants of the motorcycles, but several months down the line, we haven’t seen anything. 

Even if Cleveland would’ve updated its models with ABS, the chances of the motorcycles to leave a mark was nearly impossible for three reasons. Firstly, the quality of the motorcycles was pretty substandard. The Ace Deluxe, which we tested, had uneven panel gaps, exposed mounting screws and even the exhaust manifold mounting nuts come loose just after riding the motorcycle for a couple of days. And that wasn’t the only issue, because the test unit that we had received had some serious gearbox issues as well. 

Second reason is the price. You see, the Ace is (or rather was) priced at Rs 2.23 lakh, whereas the Misfit retails at Rs 2.5 lakh (both prices ex-showroom). For motorcycles which are powered by a 229cc, air-cooled, single-cylinder engine that produces just 15.4PS of power and 16Nm of torque, that’s a lot of money that the company was asking. Just to put things into perspective, the Hero Xtreme 200R makes 3.2PS and 1.1Nm more and it costs Rs 91,900 (ex-showroom)! 

Lastly, the company had a pretty bad track record with dealerships (if it had any). Although the company had plans for increasing its footprints across the country, those plans never materialised. So if you have bought one, then we think it might be quite a difficult task for you to get it serviced or find spare parts as well. We tried to reach the manufacturer, but we haven’t heard anything from them yet, but we will surely update this story once we hear a word from the manufacturer.

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