Raised Eyebrow Bike of the Week: CFMoto 450SS

 Good morning readers. I hope your fall harvest holiday (if you had one) was great. The fall in North America in most places is a magical time of year. Temperatures really start to turn cool meaning good riding in the southern American states. For the northern states, it means time to start those winter bike projects! Here in central Florida the weather has been great. We've had a couple of chilly days, for us, nothing an extra layer or two doesn't fix. 

 This week I saw a new bike on YouTube that really caught my eye. It is the CFMoto 450SS. CFMoto has been in the motorcycle press quite a bit lately. CFMoto is a Chinese firm that actually builds bikes for KTM. Yamaha also recently announced a partnership with them to build Yamahas for the Chinese market. The 450SS is a 50hp, parallel twin 450cc sportbike. The YouTube videos I've seen show that it is actually a pretty full featured bike for the low MSRP of $5,699. The low price and overall look and sound seem like a nice little bike for a newer sport rider or a more experienced rider looking for something different. I am finding myself falling into the second category.

2024 CFMOTO 450SS (Photo by CFMOTO)

  I have been working on my CRF450 all year this year to get it ready for some track work. This week alone I changed out the coolant and finished up my handlebar sliders so that I can take it to the kart track for some supermoto fun. There is a race organization here called South Florida MiniGP that races small bikes on kart tracks. They have a 300cc class and while this bike is too big for the class, CFMoto has a 300cc version of the bike as well. My experience riding my little Ninja 250 on the kart track shows me that having fun on a small displacement bike is a good way to enjoy performance riding at a lower risk level. I think riding the 450SS on the roads we have here would be a hoot. My FZ1 is just a bit too much for the roads around here. I can get around in second gear more than 80% of the time. A bit too heavy handed with the throttle and I will be at extra legal speeds immediately. The weight of the FZ1 means I also have to work harder to maneuver the bike when in the technical sections. A smaller, lighter bike with less raw power may mean a more engaging ride overall. The CFMoto 450SS and even the 300SS could be just the ticket.

  The direct competitors to the CFMoto bike are going to be hard to beat. The Yamaha R3 has an MSRP of $5,499. The Kawasaki Ninja 400 is going for $5,499 for the non-abs model. Suzuki's GSXR250R is a very reasonable $5,099. Honda's CBR300 is an even more amazing $4,899. CFMoto's bike will have to beat the tried and true Japanese brands for market share. Power delivery, build quality and the spec sheet will be heavily scrutinized by the more discerning rider to get them to go for the Chinese bike versus the Japanese big 4. For me, I will always default to Yamaha, but after getting to know my wee Ninja, I can't immediately reject a Kawasaki either.

  Well there you have it folks. Another option for you to think about. I hope you enjoyed this journey into the small displacement bikes. In the creation of this post I started re-reading a bunch of my Ninja posts. The idea of getting back to the kart track is getting me excited. I am going to end this post here so I can get back out to the shop! Ride safe and have fun friends.

Mat