This is living in my garage for a while and I took it for a spin this evening to clear my head after a long week. Designed in Austria, built in India and caned to within an inch of its life in Galway.

I didn’t have much interest in it at first, the build quality isn’t anything like my old 990sm and the closer I get the more Hyosung it looks – the screws holding the chainguard on are techscrews and look like they belong in a horsebox.

It has a fussy lcd display which seems too small at first but once moving it is easy to keep an eye on revs, speed, fuel and other stuff. The gear indicator is handy, I think these should be standard on everything and it has a bright sidestand warning light as well as white leds in the switchgear.

It starts with a stab of the button, ticks over like a diesel dump truck and clicks into gear with a nice secure action. The clutch takes up smoothly, no snatch and the hydraulic master cylinder feels better than its budget looks suggest.

The stubby nose, light weight and sharp brakes are perfectly matched to the peach of an engine. The single water-cooled four valve thumper delivers great gobloads of torque from just over tickover and it revs like a v-twin to 8k making a steady wave of power before the rev limiter cuts in and it flashes a red ‘shift’ light at you. Keep throwing gears at it and it accelerates to points-inducing speed in the blink of an eye. It was like being back on an RGV250 again – the ABS is unobtrusive which I didn’t expect on a budget bike built by Bajaj for KTM.

Bad points? The steering lock is too tight and I hit the lockstops doing a u-turn. There is no space under the passenger seat – not even room for a dry pair of socks. The width of the fuel tank will catch your knees if you are taller than 5’10" which I am not. The headlight is very average, especially the dip beam. It’s an ideal city bike but I plan on testing it on some back road twisties later.

I’ll stick up some more pics when i get it out in the sun, it needs another spanking tomorrow.

‘cptr