RUST magazine: RUST#37

ENDURO
THE BIKE WE ALWAYS FORGET
But not this time
BETA XTRAINER
Hey, what a cool bike! I got confused
thinking the XTrainer I rode had a
detuned 300 motor, but it was instead
a detuned 250 (apparently the XTrainer
comes in 250 and 300cc variants). And
yet it still felt so nicely torquey, like a
gentle 300 – and that’s nice.
The chassis, the whole feel is that
of a bike that’s 80% what an RR300 is.
You can feel the familial resemblance,
but the ride is smaller, softer and very
nicely controllable. There’s almost a
trials bike feel to it, but given modern
trials bikes are akin to a pogo-stick with
less accommodations, then maybe
that’s not the correct comparison. Point
being, at Hell’s Gate this was quite a
cool bike to have.
And it was also a fair bit of fun to
ride in the grass test, curiously. Maybe
because it rides lower to the ground,
like an old scrambles bike, it feels easier
to push around and lay over in the
corners. Mentally it started to occupy a
similar headspace to the RR200 – and
definitely there are character traits that
the two share. But equally they’re facing
in opposite directions. The RR200 will
make the better competition bike, the
XTrainer will make the better trail bike.
There are so many people this bike
will suit. The older rider. The Long
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