VOL. 51 ISSUE 26 JULY 1, 2014 P81
in ATV sales, as word spreads of
how good they are.
"We've had excellent results
with the 650NK and 650TK mo-
torcycles, too – our bike sales
increased a whopping 42.2 per-
cent in 2013. In volume terms,
CFMoto sold more units than
Ducati and BMW in 2013 and was
ranked the ninth largest manufac-
turer in Australia – an impressive
feat considering the brand has
only been in Australia for three
years, and we're focused on sell-
ing mid-sized models, not cheap
50cc runarounds."
For part of its policy of moving
upstream in terms of engine ca-
pacity, in 2009 CFMoto began
development entirely in house of
its own purpose-built 650cc par-
allel-twin motor as a platform for
a range of middleweight models
of different types, of which the
650NK Naked roadster was the
first.
It's a mark of how quickly its
R&D engineers work that this
model was launched on the
home market early in 2011, with
over 37,000 miles of test mileage
already under its wheels, reach-
ing export markets one year later.
The 650TK hard-luggage tourer
came next, with export sales
commencing one year ago, and
there's a 650MT adventure tour-
er in the works, too – expect it to
debut on the home market later
this year, and to be available to
export customers in 2015.
"When at CFMoto we began
developing 650cc parallel-twin
and 800cc V-twin engines in
2009, it was after other compa-
nies 20 times bigger, even 50
times bigger than ours had tried
and failed to do something simi-
lar," says the firm's Chief Engi-
neer, Zhao Yongzhou. "But we
invested much time in develop-
ment, and carefully chose sup-
pliers which would meet our high
standards of quality control, and
so we were successful in the
end."
Indeed, CFMoto is projecting
manufacture of 10,000 650cc
parallel-twin models for 2014,
with 4000 of these headed for
the Chinese home market, and
the balance for export around
