RUST magazine: RUST#39

HERITAGE
w
SPACIOUS?!
The riding position is spot-on with
both bikes, being spacious (hey, are we
selling real estate here?) and relaxed like
dirt bikes should be – only instead of a
piece of polished mahogany to sit on
(as you get with competition enduros)
you get fairly plush full-width saddles.
It would be sacrilege not to be able
to make bikes of this stature (and just
130kg) handle decently – so it’s as well
they do, yep, nice and neutral – in fact
positively accurate, with well-damped
suspension too. The only surprise is the
strength of the brakes, but we shouldn’t
be surprised there, with a whopping
320mm disc and twin-piston caliper
these should be razor-sharp. In fact
we’d call these two over-braked were it
not for the safety net that is ABS.
Now the reason, we think, two of our
riders preferred the 125 – styling aside,
because the Flat Tracker is just so cool –
could be that the 250 fails to make that
quantum leap that lifts a town bike into
a do-everything town-and-tour bike.
The 250 motor (made by Zongshen) just
doesn’t quite have the power – despite
a claimed 28hp – or the feel, for that
matter, of a faster, longer-distance bike.
It’s performance feels to be about 10-
15mph up on the 125 everywhere and
it accelerates that much faster, but you
could still see it getting hassled by cars
on the open road, especially on hills. This
250 motor works well in Fantic’s trail
riding enduro models, but it seems we’ll
need to see the 500cc versions of these
Caballeros and Flat Tracks to find real allroads
capability in the model range.
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