2001 125cc Motocross Bikes
Honda CR125R vs. Kawasaki KX125 vs. KTM 125SX vs.
Suzuki RM125 vs. TM 125MX vs. Yamaha YZ125
By THE CYCLE NEWS STAFF
PHOTOS BY BLAKE CONNER
T
ypically, we try to play it coy and
keep our shootout winner a secret
until you get to the end of the story.
But we're going to break tradition
now and tell you right up front that
the victor this time around is Yamaha's YZ125. Why the change in policy? Frankly, it's because we want to
dispense with the un-pleasantries
right off the bat, and then get on with
the rest of the comparison. You see,
we were actually hoping that the
Yamaha wouldn't win. Sure, joumalists are supposed to be objective and
all that, but we're only human, and
we're getting tired of the Tuning Fork
company's domination of late. As
you may recall, the YZ250 took the
gold medal in our 250cc MX
Shootout, and pretty much everyone
(including us) is raving about the
company's four-strokes, including the
YZ250F, which is 125cc-c1ass legal.
We toyed with the idea of including
the new thumper in this comparison
but chose not to, keeping this a two-
stroke vs. two-stroke thing. But we'll
have a YZl25 and YZ250F duel in the
near future.
Whereas our 250cc MX
Shootout appeared early in
the season, way back in September, we decided to do
more of a long-term comparison on the tiddlers. Over the
months since we received
these bikes last summer, our
testers have abused them week
after week at all of the local
Southern California area tracks.
That being the case, we were pretty
familiar with the units in question (all
six of them!) by the time we finally
decided to gather them together,
freshen them up and take them to
Glen Helen Raceway for a head-tohead shootout.
What we discovered during all of
this was that 125cc motocross riders have a wealth of options available to them in 2001. Not only have
the Big Four Japanese manufacturers made significant improvements
to their models for the new millennium, but KTM has provided what we
consider to be its most competitive
motocrosser to date (as you'll see
from our podium choices). In addition, we were able to get our hands
Call in I~e rederal proseculors; e've
22
MARCH 14,2001 •
cue
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on an Italian-built TM this year (fortunate, since Husqvarna wasn't able
to get us its Italian-built 125 in
time).
a onopol.
