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Oh dear, Big Brother Honda seems to be at it again, chucking a spanner in the works of a seemingly harmless service which benefits GoldWing riders, especially of the older models, which Honda no longer supports itself.

The well known GoldWingDocs reference and bulletin website has long been a very useful internet source of technical reference material for GoldWings, especially for older models, for which all sorts of Service and other Manuals are available for downloading free of charge.

There is some useful information on current models too, for example a complete lest of service bulletins (including recalls) for the GL1800.

Maybe that’s what Honda really objects to; the stuff on current models.  It’s difficult to see what commercial interest they could have in blocking access to what is now effectively historical reference material for early GoldWings, helpful only to people who are restoring or repairing old stuff which Honda will no longer support in any way.

Honda has a track record of anti-competitive action

A couple of years ago HondaUK bore down heavily on UK  Motorcycle Dealers who had been importing GoldWings (and other Honda models) from outside the EU whenever there was a good enough economic reason to do so. In other words if GoldWings, new and used, could be bought cheaply enough to pay for bringing them into UK and still be sold more cheaply than bikes supplied by HondaUK, resourceful dealers were doing it.

A Dealer I know had got it off to something of a fine art and he could ship used bikes from Japan to UK for an average cost of little more than £50.  I don’t remember coming across any GoldWing’s of Japanese origin (a pity that, Japanese GL1800s are fitted with windscreen wiper which I would like to have seen in action) but there were certainly plenty of other Japan-sourced Honda motorcycles being brought in, including grey imports (i.e. model never sold officially in UK) like the PC800.

Although there is legislation which is supposed to prevent anti-competitive price-rigging by manufacturers these days, there are also laws which entitle manufacturers to protect their trading identity and this have overriding effect.  You may remember a landmark legal case which was reported in UK a few years ago in which Levi were able to stop Tesco buying their products abroad (in this case in the Far East) cheaper than Levi were willing to sell them to Tesco in UK.  Levi’s case asserted a manufacturer’s right to prevent the use of its name on products which had not been designed for use in the UK market and they won.

HondaUK were able to use these same laws to discourage UK dealers from importing motorcycles by threatening to sue for 50% of any profits the dealer had made from parallel imports plus legal costs.  This was likely to succeed if taken to Court, so the dealers gave in.  UK Dealers have abandoned grey and parallel imports altogether for this reason.  This move affected both new and used GoldWings, which were previously being imported, mainly from the USA, by the container load.

It wasn’t just the big boys that HondaUK went after, they also got their lawyers to threaten local (non-franchised) motorcycle businesses too.  One such Dealer I know spent £4,000 in legal fees to look into contesting Honda’;s action before giving up, on the basis of advice that he would lose.  So HondaUK’s move worked; UK motorcycle dealers have all been frightened off any grey or parallel importing.  Other motorcycle manufacturers have taken similar action in UK as well.

Fortunately the laws which allowed Honda to succeed against dealers don’t prevent personal imports of GoldWings into UK, nor incidentally imports by dealers from within the EU.  As long as it’s not being done in way of trade a GoldWing can be imported from anywhere in the world into the UK.  And once a bike has been imported in this way and registered and used in UK by someone, it can then be sold to a UK dealer, who can then sell it on in the usual way.  It’s only grey or parallel importing by dealers from outside the EU which is affected.

Nevertheless this move by HondaUK succeeded in all but stopping grey and parallel imports at a stroke.  HondaUK were therefore able to protect their much-steeper-than-elsewhere prices against competition. And having achieved that, HondaUK’s prices have risen steeply.  For example HondaUK’s price for a GL1800 has gone up by more than £3,000 in  the past two years.

Why pick on GoldWingDocs?

OK, they have their living to make and maybe there is commercial and economic justification for higher prices in UK for current models.  But Honda doesn’t stock spares or provide any technical support for bikes over about ten years old.  Owners of these bikes have to source parts from specialist dealers in them like Dave Silver Spares.

So what possible commercial interest can Honda America have in telling GoldWingDocs to take their stuff off the internet?

Sadly Honda has decided to lean on GoldWingDocs and to require removal of all copyright material from their download list, no matter how old and no matter whether Honda has any intention of making it available to prospective users themselves.  This is a great pity because some of this stuff is extremely valuable to Wingers who are working on and especially restoring early GoldWings and is not readily available elsewhere if at all.

Still time to download what you need

There is still time to download what you might want for your bike by visiting this excellent Website, which offers lots of other things apart from the downloads.  No time scale has been announced by GoldWingDocs for the removal of the technical material they are currently still allowing to be downloaded – but it would make sense for Wingers to act sooner rather than later so as not to miss what may be the last opportunity to access this material.

When you visit their website you can search for what you interested in and simply click on the relevant link to download their source file.  There is no charge for this service.

You are however advised by GoldWingDocs to use a Download Manager for the job, to improve both the speed and the reliability of the downloads.  Many of these files are very large (eg 10 Mb or more) and downloads of big fules like these can easily encounter a hiccup part way through so you end up with a corrupt file.  A Download Manager more or less eliminates this risk and also completes the downloading at least twice as fast if not more.

I downloaded Free Download Manager (FDM) which downloads this sort of stuff easily, all by itself.  It does exactly what the name implies, completely free of charge.

Once it’s installed it places a little box on the bottom right of your screen into which you simply drag and drop the link you’re interested in from GoldWingDocs into the box.  The files is then downloaded automatically and very rapidly, as if by magic.  Unless you choose at the start of the download, FDM automatically stores the files you download in your Downloads Folder (C:/downloads) from where you can easily access them and/or transfer them elsewhere on your computer.

How about telling Honda what you think of their actions?

GoldWingDocs have invited all Wingers to contact Honda America to suggest they are getting this wrong.  It you would like to write in to state your view this is where you should send them:

President, Motorcycle Division
American Honda Motor Co., Inc.
Mail stop: 100-4C-7B
P.O. Box 2200
Torrance, CA 90509-2200
USA

Telephone: (866) 784-1870 (or from outside the States 001 866 784 1870)

Further Reading

The letter from Honda’s lawyer, GoldWingDocs’s reply and lots and lots of opinions about the issue, almost all condemning Honda for their action can be seen on the GoldWingDocs Forum.