Honda UK have big plans to fully centralise their motorcycle PDI process – bringing it all into a central team located at their Honda Motor Europe Logistics UK centre in Swindon.
A small team began completing the inspection work at the facility in June 2025 – initially operating as a team of five on a handful of models for select solus dealerships picked at random.
This has now expanded to a team of 16 – working across two shifts on everything from the miniature Grom and to the latest and greatest Fireblade superbike – with only the GL1800 Gold Wing (due to its size) and the latest electric models including the WN7 roadster not yet included in the set-up.
“We build the bikes, so why not actually PDI it, so it’s for a Honda technician from start to finish,” Head of Honda UK’s motorcycling division, Andrew Mineyko told MCN. “It helps our network, so if we can take pressure off them by doing the build and PDI here, it frees up their time and resource to do customer service work.”
As it stands, around 60% of Honda’s UK mainland dealerships are served by the team, with off-shore operations in locations including the Isle of Man, and Northern Ireland yet to be brought on board and machines still delivered in crates.
“We had a case where a customer came into a dealership on a Saturday to buy a bike and it was PDI’d ready to go,” Mineyko continued. “Before, they would have had to pull the technician off a retail job, so it makes it more efficient and gets the customer on the road hopefully a bit quicker.
“We started with certain bikes just to get the ball rolling – certain dealers, and that’s grown and grown. So at the moment we’re at 60% of the network. By the end of November, we plan to be 100% of the network.”
The Swindon team currently complete between 60 and 180 PDIs a day, with each bike going through a rigorous testing procedure before it can be loaded onto one of the specially-designed double decker lorry trailers.
During our visit, the facility had around 4500 motorcycles onsite – all destined to be sent out to dealers in the next couple of months.
It begins with the bikes being removed from their crates – with some models requiring components such as front wheels to be attached prior to being pushed onto the next stage.
“You’ve got pre-deck, deck, and final inspection,” Operations Manager, Daryl Boulter said. “Pre-deck is where you install the mirrors, the battery – making sure the owners’ manual is in the correct place on the bike.
“And then deck is where [we do] all the torque settings, chain slack, checks all the fluids,” he added. “We follow a tablet, which has basically a checklist guide which you go through so you can’t miss anything.”
Each stage is also photographed for evidence, with every bolt marked in pink to distinguish it from any previous inspection marks made prior to arriving in Swindon – with machines arriving from locations including Italy, Japan, India, Thailand, and Spain.
The facility also holds a wide range of parts from the past 15 years, and should any bike fail a damage inspection during the PDI process, it’s pulled into a separate bay for a dedicated technician to carry out the required work.
“If we need to expand and have more people along, more shifts, then we’ll do so,” Mineyko added. “We want to put another three bays on already – that’s already in the plan now.
“It’s grown a couple of times already in the first year and it will continue to grow, so if we need 20 techs, 25 techs, then we’ll…