FYMoto FY250. Or is it a Yamaha?

NOT LONG ago every bike to emerge from China was an air-cooled, 125cc naked that looked like a 20-year-old Honda CG125. But now the increasingly affluent market over there means there’s a push towards ever larger sports bikes.

This is the FYMoto FY250. And yes, it does look like Yamaha’s patent lawyers might want to have closer look, as it’s almost indistinguishable from the firm’s YZF-R125. The bodywork, swingarm, even the footpegs are pretty much identical to the Yamaha parts, but underneath it all the FY250 hides a 249cc, single-cylinder, 26hp engine.

While that’s a healthy dose more than the learner-legal, 15hp YZF-R125 can muster, and FYMoto has the 250’s curb weight down as a lithe 150kg, ready-to-ride, the bike’s top speed – just 79mph – seems to suggest that not all of those figures can be accurate.

Will we ever see this bike in Europe? That’s very unlikely, particularly with that Yamaha-alike styling. There are simply too many other, more appealing Chinese bikes for importers to pick from.

While the bike mirrors the advancing Chinese market’s tastes for sports bikes and growing appetite for larger-capacity machines, the cloned styling is actually a step backwards compared to some of the more distinctive, self-confident and self-generated design China’s more established bike firms are starting to come up with.