FEATURE
VISITING CFMOTO'S FACTORY
P84
one piston up/one down), chain
cam-drive and a gear-driven
counter-balancer to smooth out
the vibes, represents the arrival
of China's long-awaited debut
middleweight motorcycle models
- the first 'real' bikes to emanate
from the world's largest motor-
cycle market that is the People's
Republic.
As such, it's a first rung on the
climb up the engine displace-
ment ladder that's certain to fuel
an increasingly irresistible attack
on Western markets by Chinese
manufacturers. There's no deny-
ing that this is a pretty direct rip-
off of a Kawasaki ER6n, design-
wise, but the 650NK was the first
customer motorcycle to come
out of China with an engine larg-
er than 250cc and, after visiting
the modern, well-equipped CF-
Moto factory in Hangzhou, 105
miles southwest of Shanghai,
it's hard not to be convinced that
this company is indeed a game
changer.
Back To The Future
What we have here is history re-
peating itself. Back in the early
1960s Japanese bikes were
scorned as being cheap, cheer-
ful, and not particularly desir-
able small capacity 50cc-175cc
runabouts. But Soichiro Honda
changed all that, firstly with his
drive to raise quality standards
and reliability that his Japanese
rivals had to match, then by
ramping up the cubic capacity of
his company's offerings to export
customers.
Thus in 1965 Honda's – and
Japan's – first middleweight
sportbike hit the showrooms, the
CB450 'Black Bomber' parallel
twin. That was followed four years
later by what's generally recog-
nized as the most significant mo-
torcycle ever produced by any
manufacturer – the four-cylinder
overhead-cam disc-braked Hon-
da CB750 – and the bike world
would never be the same again.
While CFMoto's range of mid-
dleweights is by no means as
much of a landmark as the first
Honda four, it is for sure the mod-
ern Chinese equivalent of the
CB450, the first product from a
Japanese manufacturer to dem-
onstrate convincingly to Western
customers that a Japanese bike
could be fun as well as functional,
sporty in addition to affordable.
And the price is indeed the
punchline, for in Australia for
example the 650NK costs just
6000 Australian Dollars ($5650)
(Left) Lots of green to make lots
of green. (Above) CFMoto's naked
version of its 650cc twin.
