Bajaj Pulsar 220F – Why people still love it?

Bajaj Pulsar family has grown up with the period, but customers are still loving the elder siblings of the Pulsar family.

Bajaj Pulsar 220F and Pulsar 150 are still seen in demand and grab a huge amount of sales. The blog will be focusing on the Pulsar 220F. The Pulsar 220F is the semi-faired bike from the Pulsar family and is decade old now. The name of the motorcycle has been renamed from Pulsar 220 to Pulsar 220F, but for this blog, we will use the name Pulsar 220F. So let’s find out the reason for the success of the motorcycle.

Power

Motorcycle enthusiast has already guessed the first reason which is of course power. The bike was considered as the fastest Indian motorcycle for a pretty long time. The bike still offers enough grunt to give a tough competition to its rivals. For reference, the current BS6 model produces around 21 bhp max power and 19 Nm of peak torque. The engine is a 220 cc, air-cooled, single-cylinder unit that gets mated with a 5-speed gearbox. For most of the time, the motorcycle was used as a benchmark for testing the performance of other bikes, that’s the level of performance been offered.

The claimed top speed of the motorcycle was about 135 km/hr.

Design

The second most important point of the product’s success is the looks or design. The bike looks were ahead of time and had a nice muscular semi-fairing. The headlamp unit gets projector lamps and DRls that makes the bike pretty modern. Before Bajaj Pulsar 220F there was no Indian bike to offer projector headlamps and LED taillamps. Except the front fairing, the bike appears to be similar to the Pulsar 180 and why not as they share the same chassis.

Pricing

When the bike was first launched in India, it was available at below Rs 1 lakhs (ex-showroom). Now due to BS6 regulations and as well as previous safety regulations, the bike has got a premium price tag of Rs 1.17 lakhs (ex-showroom). However to Bajaj was not happy due to increased price tag and wanted the same charm to bring at a lesser price point, so they launched the Pulsar 180F which has significant power drop but offers a similar level of rideability and fun. The Bajaj Pulsar 180F is priced at Rs 1.07 lakhs (ex-showroom).

Technically there’s no semi-faired motorcycle in the price range but the faired bikes like Suzuki Gixxer, Hero Xtreme 200S do fall in the same price band. Considering the rivals, Bajaj Pulsar 220F still offers a lot better value for money in the segment. Overall we don’t think there’s still any bike to offer performance and design at this price point. So why wouldn’t anyone fall in love with this motorcycle?