New four-cylinder gets Chinese launch with head-turning price
Australia is currently one of the few countries outside China to be offered CFMoto’s pretty, retro-styled 500SR Voom sports bike and that means there’s a good chance that the company’s latest offering – the 500SR – will also reach these shores eventually.
Newly launched in China, the 500SR is, as its name suggests, a close relation to the 500SR Voom. It shares the same underpinnings but ditches the neo-retro, 1980s-inspired look for a style that’s firmly in the present. In fact, you’ll need an eye for detail (or at least to read the stickers on the side) to instantly distinguish the 500SR from its sister models, the 675SR-R triple and the bigger four-cylinder 750SR-S.
The engine is a revised version of the Voom’s 500cc, DOHC four, with new camshafts and covers, putting out a claimed 58kW at 12,500rpm and 49Nm at 10,000rpm. At 120km/h, the ram-air effect from the nose intakes ups the peak power to 61kW. That’s well clear of Honda’s new CBR500R Four, launched simultaneously in China, which maxes out at 52.8kW from a similar-sized four-cylinder engine.
The CFMoto’s engine, coming in at exactly 500cc thanks to a 63mm bore and 40.1mm stroke, features a 12.3:1 compression ratio, double overhead camshafts and 16 valves, fed by Bosch fuel injection and four mechanical throttle bodies that are connected directly to the twistgrip via an old-school cable rather than newfangled ride-by-wire. That brings a couple of limitations, notably the lack of any switchable power modes or throttle maps, and restricts the bike to a quickshifter that works only on upshifts: with no electronic throttles, it can’t auto-blip for quickshifted downshifts. A cable also operates the slipper clutch that sits between the engine and the six-speed transmission.
Chassis-wise, it’s familiar stuff from the Voom, with the same chrome-molybdenum steel tube frame, paired to an aluminium subframe and cast alloy swingarm. Adjustable 41mm USD forks and a multi-link adjustable monoshock carry out suspension duties, while the brakes are Nissin four-pot calipers on dual 300mm discs at the front, aided by Continental ABS and cooled via MotoGP-style cowls that are helpfully labelled ‘Brake Cooling’ in an endearingly literal way that’s reminiscent of the sort of names you’d find emblazoned on Japanese bikes in the 80s (anyone else reminded of the Honda CBX550F and VF400F’s ‘Inboard Ventilated Disc’ system?) The rear ABS is switchable, rather like the supermoto ABS systems found on some KTMs.
On board you’re faced with an oversized, 6.2-inch TFT dash that outshines the 5-inch versions that you’ll find on many more expensive bikes, and of course there’s phone connectivity. The standard kit also includes auto headlights, auto-cancelling indicators, an emergency brake light system, tyre pressure monitoring, a USB charge port and compatibility with action cameras.
While it’s a small bike, the 500SR isn’t unusably tiny, with a standard seat height of 805mm and optional high and low versions that shift that figure by 10mm in each direction. The wheelbase, 1395mm, is short but again not unreasonably so: a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4RR is 15mm shorter, for example, and the original 1998 Yamaha R1 had the same dimensions as the 500SR despite twice as much capacity and power.
And the price for all that? In China it’s just 28,980 Yuan, equivalent to AU$6133 at the time of writing. Of course it will cost more if its reaches the Australian market: the closely-related 500SR Voom costs 32,980 Yuan in China, which is around AU$7000, but comes in at AU$10,990 once it reaches dealers over here. That suggests that if the cheaper 500SR makes it to Australia it could just sneak under the AU$10k mark.
