Rekindled Dreams

HERO KARIZMA XMR

- Anant Pandey

Are motorcycles mere machines? Are they just a product of countless lifeless parts coming together in unison? If that were the case, people like you and me would be called machineheads, not petrolheads. Two decades back, every petrolhead in the country, irrespective of their age, stature or sex for that matter, wanted one particular motorcycle in their garage. The Hero Karizma. It was a stuff of dreams which was turned into a beautiful reality. A few years down the line, this dream slowly turned into a living, rolling nightmare with the next iterations of the Karizma. Hero has now woken up from a deep slumber, to make that dream a reality again in the form of Karizma XMR. Does it have what it takes to evoke the same emotions, the same ambitions and not to forget, rekindle the same dreams a potential motorcyclist saw back in the day?

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Catharsis. That is what the Karizma XMR is to Hero Motocorp because forget about winning a beauty pageant, the last few generations of the Karizma weren't even eligible of entering one. Hero's stint with Eric Buell Racing and its reflection on Hero's own design philosophy wasn't exactly a home run. That changes with the Karizma XMR because say what you may, this motorcycle has a very likeable stance. We have always been crazy for fully-faired motorcycles and this is one of the good looking ones. Apart from a few design elements like the Xoom-inspired headlamp setup, the rest of the bodywork including cuts and creases look very proportionate. Personally, I like the way it looks from a distance, if viewed head on because the XMR actually looks like a mini CBR1000RR-R and only a schmuck would take it in a bad way.