Dirt and Trail Dec 2019

THE
LITTLE
Yamaha XT 250.
Honda CRF250L.
GUYS
Did you know that in South Africa, bikes under the
500cc mark dominate the sales charts? True story. Small
bikes are all the rage at the moment because they
represent such great value for money – and they are
economical to run. We borrowed two of South Africa’s
best-sellers and took them out for a little ride…
Neither bike needs much in the way of introduction,
both have been around for a while with Honda
adding this pretty black colour scheme, the Stealth
Black.
Linex Lifestyles XT 250 is in the traditional blue
guise, and they mounted an aftermarket Givi screen
up front.
Our Juan rode the XT on our Gyppo Tuesday
adventure ride, the thought was, that if anyone
battled, we’d have a smaller bike along to help out.
As it happened, one of the guys on the ride had some
battery issues, so he used the XT for a short leg until
we got his bike charged up and sorted.
Juan rode the XT with the bigger cc bikes – and
in the terrain we rode, the big bikes could not really
go that fast, so he had no problem keeping up and
even skieting ahead when some photographs were
required - and while some of the guys on the bigger
bikes were sweating a bit – he grinned the whole way
through.
We didn’t take the Honda along because it was
brand new and once we had run it in a bit, we pitted
the bikes against each other.
Back at the office we sat around chatting about
the bikes.
Guys and Girls. Not only are Small cc bikes
great as work tools and commercial vehicles, but
they are awesome fun to shoot about on. Small,
unintimidating, really low maintenance – and they
are so easy to ride. In fact – a few years ago, we
66 DIRT & TRAIL MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019