Hero Karizma Coming Back With A Liquid-cooled Engine

The OG Karizma was a performance-oriented bike with its 223cc engine making 20PS and 19Nm. 

• This one though, will have a smaller 210cc engine.
• That said, it’ll be a liquid-cooled one, a first for the company.
• It’ll even be paired to a six-speed transmission. 

The Hero Honda Karizma was and still is an iconic motorbike (barring the EBR update, obviously). To resurrect the Hero brand, the new motorbike must be truly unique. The engineers appear to have cracked the code, as the bike is set to make a comeback with a modern 210cc liquid-cooled engine.

Yes, the Karizma was a performance leader in the early 2000s, producing a respectable 20PS and 19Nm from its carburetted 223cc air-cooled single mill. To keep up with the times while remaining true to the Karizma legacy, Hero is reportedly going all out with a slightly smaller but hopefully more advanced mill capable of giving modern 200-300cc bikes a run for their money. According to an online report, the new mill will produce around 25PS and 30Nm and will be mated to a six-speed gearbox.

Our only hope is that Hero stylists keep it as true to the original Karizma as possible, rather than jazzing it up as they did with the Karizma ZMR. The bikini fairing and sporty looks were quite futuristic for the Indian biking scene at the time.

Hero's best shot at breaking into the small-capacity premium bike segment may be the Karizma. When it arrives, the upcoming Karizma will compete with the new-generation Pulsar 250s and the Suzuki Gixxer 250. 

We're glad to see the icon making a comeback. I mean, this approach to resurrecting an icon is far superior to soldering on the same old bike and updating it with new colours every other year, as Bajaj has done with the now rather dated-sounding Pulsar 220F.