Belgrade MotoPassion Exhibition
In it’s 15th year, the Belgrade moto exhibition is a great little event. Obviously, a bit of a who’s who in the industry for central Europe, so all the usual suspects were there.
I felt like I was displaying bad manners as I strolled around ignoring everything with road tyres, but I was on a little mission - to specifically see what we were missing out on in Australia.
As it turns out, nothing much!
The display floors were brimming with very nice adventure machinery, but nothing new that I believe would sell well in Oz.
It would seem that ‘mid-engine’ sized bikes are very popular in Europe but unfortunately they are all porky little buggers that generally lack power even before their sad power-to-weight ratio is taken into account.
The only bike new to me, above 650cc was an offering from Chinese company, QJ Motors.
QJ’s SRT 800 is a stunning looking bike with great suspension, brakes and general build quality. Unfortunately for QJ, its nearest rival, being the CF Moto 800MT, is miles ahead in stats. The QJ is statistically something like a Sherman tank with a Holden Barina engine.
One of the most capable looking mid-power rigs on show was the Moto Morini X-Cape. Sadly, like its Italian brother, the Benelli 502, the X-Cape is also sporting an underpowered Chinese engine.
You may be recognising a pattern here? Yes, China has successfully invaded the European bike market.
It’s kind of sad that the excitement of finding a standout adventure bike that’s new to me, died a rather quick death and the realisation that the only stand-out bike in this relentless Chinese market penetration, is the CF Moto 800. The 800MT gives nothing away to it’s Japanese or Italian competitors and shows clearly that CF Moto are still the only Chinese company listening to the market.
If one bike did jump out at me a little, it was a learner legal offering from a company called Voge.
These guys have come pretty close to a perfect learner adventure bike in their 650.
Sporting the ultra reliable single cylinder engine from the Loncin factory that powers other makes including BMW, Kayaba suspension and Nissin brakes at a reasonable 210 kg, this bike has no electronic wizzardry to speak of.
The bike feels very nimble to sit on and offers excellent rider comfort.
Apart from some extraordinary 125 singles, … , yes 125 adventure bikes, there’s really nothing else of interest in the Euro market that we don’t seem to already have in Australia.
To conclude, there were a few other bikes that fell into the adventure sector that I won’t even mention. That’s because although they may look reasonable, they are porkers and wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding.
Regardless, I did enjoy MotoPassion,…, after all it was a motorbike show, so rest assured the grass is not greener - at least, not here in Europe.
