This might be the coolest Honda you can buy here in the UK!

It’s a dinky lightweight 250 with only one seat and is powered by a 47bhp single-cylinder engine.

A Honda Racing motorcycle

IT might not have its own dedicated page on the Honda UK website, but it is still available to UK buyers via the Padgett’s Motorcycles dealership, and quite frankly, I want one!

It’s the NSF250R, a dinky track-only road racer which puts Moto3 handling dynamics in the palm of your hand - quite literally.

Power for the diminutive track-only racer comes from a 249cc four-valve single, which is inclined 15 degrees to the rear of the bike to help centralise its mass and make room for the ram-air-equipped, front-mounted airbox. All told the bike produces 47bhp and 20lb-ft of torque, and while that might not sound like much, with a dry weight of just 84kg (yes, we double-checked that’s the correct number) there’s isn’t much need to have mahoosive power outputs.

The engine and overall shape of the bike are beautiful, but when you start to dig down beneath the skin of the bike and look at the frame, the suspension, the brakes, the swingarm - it’s bloody stunning! I don’t want to ride this thing - I wouldn’t fit on it anyway - I want to hang it on my wall! 

And actually, doing that wouldn’t be that financially taxing, if you lived in Japan, anyway, as this jewel-like racing machine comes with a price tag of 1,490,500 Japanese Yen, which at today’s exchange rate equates to a shade over £8,000. Buy the same bike in the UK through Padgett’s though and you’d be paying around £15k, once the importation and taxes have been paid for. So I’ll stop clearing that space on my living room wall and put back up the pictures of the family, then.

2023 Honda CL500 Review

2023 Honda CL500 Review | New Scrambler for the 500cc class!