ZXMoto is working BMW R1300 GS rivaling big-bore boxer twin
ZXMoto has unveiled a working shaft drive boxer twin of around 1,000cc, with 100bhp. Two years after its founding, the Chinese brand is eyeing BMW's best-selling adventure bike.
The burgeoning Chinese brand, ZXMoto, seems to be pushing in every available direction, with sports bikes, nakeds, lightweight off-roaders, rally bikes and more. If it’s got two wheels and an engine, ZXMoto wants to have a crack at building it.
Its latest revelation, though, might see the brand going toe-to-toe with the biggest and best-selling adventure bike of the last twenty years.
The company’s founder, Zhang Xue (hence the ‘ZX’ in the brand’s name), has revealed a new engine unlike anything in the existing range. Clearly a boxer twin, the company first teased the new engine at EICMA in 2025. Back then, it was nothing more than a rendering and a dream.
Fast forward to today, and it’s fully designed and built, and seemingly ready to slot into a new bike.
Presenting the engine at CIMA 2026, Zhang Xue showed off an apparently fully working and developed engine with a capacity of around 1,000cc.
While the official specification of the engine remains unknown at the time of writing, reports from China suggest it has an output north of 100bhp, liquid cooling, and chain-driven cams, as per the latest generation of boxer twins from BMW.
Like the BMW engine, the ZXMoto powerplant features a longitudinal layout, with an output shaft at the rear of the engine. That is obviously priming it for a shaft drive to the rear wheel, a feature that has become a mainstay of BMW’s sports touring and adventure bikes.
And while a boxer twin of around 1,000cc and more than 100bhp isn’t groundbreaking in itself, it’s the speed of development that is the more interesting part of this story.
ZXMoto was only officially founded in 2024. By 2025, it was presenting new bikes at EICMA, racing, and winning in the WorldSSP championship, while also showing off new engines and technologies.
Now, just two years after the company was formed, it has a working large-capacity boxer twin that appears to be designed with a shaft-driven motorcycle in mind. That is a fairly clear statement of intent.
There is also the question of what happens next. ZXMoto has shown that it can move from an idea to a production-ready engine remarkably quickly, and a boxer twin opens up more possibilities than just one adventure bike. A shaft-driven sport tourer, road bike or even a large-capacity naked could all make use of the same basic powerplant.
What we do know is that the company has gone from showing a computer-generated boxer twin at EICMA 2025 to displaying a working engine at CIMA 2026. If the next step is a big adventure bike with a shaft drive, BMW could have another Chinese-built rival to keep an eye on.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
