Well, I guess if you want people to associate their gambling addiction with your brand, you’d better start them off early.

Huh. I really need to go find one of these things and take a look. According to the specs the seat height on the Grom is around 0.5” taller than the old Ninja.

Full coverage on my 650R is $32/mo. I don’t remember offhand what the coverage for my 250 was (that was almost 10 years ago) but I’m fairly certain it was less.

I just checked the NY CL, and you’re right. Most of those bikes are less than a year old, which makes me think new riders are getting upcharged at the dealer and not keeping their bikes very long. I wonder how many people buy a used Grom off CL for that much more than MSRP... and why?

Oof, sounds rough. There’s nothing wrong with auto, like they say- it’s not what you ride, but that you ride.

The Grom would have to be pretty close to free insurance to be less than what I paid for my old 250, and I suspect you’d have to keep it for a while to make up the difference in purchase prices.

It could, but I think a 250 is much closer to a Grom than it is to an SV650 or even a 650R, and it’s something else that a beginner rider might consider. I don’t think anyone is cross-shopping a Grom and a Magna*.

*with the exception of the people who said they want the Grom purely for the hoonage factor. ;)

And nearly twice the price, before depreciation. But I can see the appeal of a ride that no one else has used.

I wasn’t being mean to the Grom, I just wanted to get to know him better. :/

‘88-’07 250’s are so common you can find one in good shape under $2k with very little effort. And if you break it you can buy a whole second bike without spending much more than you would on a financed Grom. But I’m sure the warranty is a big plus for folks who don’t want to deal with any issues.

I find it funny how quickly people jump to that response. I think most people misinterpreted my post as suggesting that the Ninja was better- I wasn’t, I was asking because I don’t know much about the Grom and wanted to be better informed. At the very least I’ve learned that it has strong cult following.

That’s why I was asking, I haven’t been on one yet. Makes sense in that light.

Now that’s a reason I can understand.

Well, to be honest, that’s not a very helpful reply. I wasn’t making an argument that you should pick one over the other, just inquiring what about the Grom was appealing. Having owned a 250, I think it’s a lot more similar to the Grom than it is to the ZX-series Ninjas. It’s not a sportbike by any means, or even…

Is the Grom really that much physically smaller than the Ninja 250? I haven’t seen a Grom in person, but I had a 250 for a while, and even at 5’9” I found it tiny.

The old school NinJA 250s aren’t really sportbikes, they’re just upright/standards with plastic fairings. Kind of like the older 650R’s. (I’ve had both, they’re nothing like the ZX-series Ninjas).

Just out of curiosity, what makes a $3200 Grom appealing over, say, an $1800 used Ninja 250?

I have mixed feelings about this. Microtransactions leave a bad taste, and it’s a slippery slope to “pay for engrams” or “Just $0.99 to refill your heavy ammo!” and “$5 to double your number of weekly raid runs that drop loot!”. But on the other hand, if there are enough people out there who want to pay for things…

Whales... don’t have those.

Maybe it would help if you actually read the linked article?