Weekly Visordown Marketplace watch

THE VISORDOWN Marketplace classified section is packed with sweet wheels for every pocket, and every two-wheeled desire! Each week, our man Tony Middlehurst is going to pick out a bike for sale, and give it the once-over. This week - it's a well priced Kawasaki Ninja 250R. And is it just us or does that garage look familiar??!!

If you believe in the mystical power of manically high revs, you need to buy this bike. 

Last week we showed you a clean, low mileage Kawasaki KLE 650 Versys at a daft-sounding £1,800. At first, we thought it was a typo. A similar bike in a dealership would have been more than £3k. 

Why was it such a snip? The bike’s USA registration and ad revealed that the owner was on his way back to the States after spending some time in the UK. Unloading his two-wheeled transportation was simply the next thing on his to-do list after ‘empty sock drawer’. 

And hallelujah: yer man had not one but two bikes. Here’s his other low-miles beauty, a 2009 Kawasaki Ninja 250R that’s now on Visordown’s Marketplace at the giveaway price of £1,200 – a good grand below normal retail. 

As with the Versys, this Ninja needs to be put through a final Motorcycle Single Vehicle Approval inspection at £85 to get a British numberplate, but it’s not a scary procedure. There are 17 test stations across mainland UK, only one of which doesn’t do two-wheel solo bikes. You just book it in and collect your Minister’s approval Certificate (MAC) at the end, assuming it passes. Judging by the pics, you’d be surprised if it didn’t. 

And then what would you have? A super-agile, mad-revving mini-superbike that will give you most of the thrills of bigger tackle but at much lower, more police-friendly speeds. 

Basically you ride it like an old-school two-stroke, keeping the revs up in the powerband between 10,000 and the 14,000 redline. Not that there is a powerband as such. Forget that. Just keep it spinning hard and don’t worry about anything, not even speeding tickets, because even at 13,000rpm in top (6th) gear you’ll be doing less than 110mph. It’ll feel like a lot more, though. 33bhp goes a long way on a 154kg bike. 

Don’t view the 250R as a learner bike. They’re way more fun than that. They’re not bulging with tech (the speedo is cable-driven, ooh) but they are tough little blighters that will go on for ever, and you can ramp up the excitement by sticking a rorty Two Brothers pipe on it.  

The absence of any form of suspension adjustment might become a problem after a long ride on a hot day, and so might bottoming out if you’re powerfully built, but the high bars make it usefully comfy in the city, it’s got wavy brake discs, and it’s a hell of a lot better looking than an X-Max. 

2009 Kawasaki Ninja 250R £1200 (8 out of 10)

Cheery Stuff

Low miles, stupidly low price, better brakes (and more interesting) than an ER 

Leery Stuff

Over 70mpg is possible, but only if you’re keeping it in the bottom half of the tacho. Don’t do that. You will need to grant solace to your bum on a regular basis.