On Point for the Road
The Ibex 800 E makes a very good travel bike.
In case you haven’t noticed, Chinese motorcycles are here to stay, but not in the form in which they were first introduced to Canada. In the early 2000s, disreputable websites and salesmen in small-time powersports dealerships started pushing machines like the Konker KSM200 or the Lifan GY-5 — low-powered motorcycles, with an emphasis on dual sports, scooters and cruisers, with low price tags. Oh, and low quality, too. I would know: I spent years riding these bikes for various tests, and while I never had one blow up on me, I did spend a lot of time cleaning up rust and fixing basic problems that you’d never find on a Japanese bike, like a suspension linkage that worked to reduce shock travel, not extend it.
The new crop of Chinese bikes is much closer to machines from Europe and Japan. CFMOTO is actually a part-owner of KTM, and they build motorcycles for the Austrian manufacturer, including the 790 Duke and the 790 Adventure. The CFMOTO Ibex 800 E is basically a re-skinned version of the KTM 790 Adventure with minor changes to the chassis and electronics. I managed to get my hands on one for an extended test ride in the southwestern U.S. last winter, picking it up from a Las Vegas dealer to start the test.
FAMILIAR FOR A REASON
Pulling out of the parking lot, the CFMOTO Ibex 800 E felt very familiar, and that should be no surprise, because the parallel twin engine appears to be almost identical to the LC8c powerplant that KTM uses in the 790. Peak horsepower is about 94 hp at 9,000 rpm is basically the same, but the CFMOTO has a bit less torque (57 lb-ft at 6,600 rpm, versus the KTM’s 60 lb-ft at 6,600 rpm). I think the difference comes down to the CFMOTO’s Bosch EFI system, where the KTM uses a DKK Dell’Orto system.
Las Vegas traffic can be hectic, but the Ibex was easy to steer through the urban traffic as night fell, and the bike even kept an eye on my surroundings for me. Autonomous safety systems are all the rage on flagship motorcycles these days, and while CFMOTO did not put an adaptive cruise control system on this bike (maintaining a set following distance from the vehicle in front), it did put a proximity alert on the bike, giving me a visual flash on the dash when a…
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