FMX 650 (RD12)

The chassis is where the FMX quietly overdelivers. That upside-down fork is proper kit, not jewelry hung on to look sporty, and I leaned on it across some genuinely nasty surfaces without it once losing the plot. It kept feeding me a steady read on the front tire, which is exactly how trust builds on the way into a bend. Then there's the trick with the mass: the bike carries more weight than your arms ever notice. A light input turns it in right now and it holds the line you pick, precise and settled even when the pace lifts and the road turns technical. None of the woolly, second-guessing front you brace for on a budget frame. At what this machine costs, suspension this sorted is a real and welcome surprise.

There's genuinely little to flag here, and that silence is the praise. This engine did duty in the Dominator 650 and a string of other Hondas, and it simply gets on with running rather than handing you anything to lose sleep over. You see the payoff at resale, where clean examples still fetch honest money precisely because a buyer knows exactly what he's taking on.

No complaints from me on the anchors. They shed speed more convincingly than the enduro-grade gear you'll meet on rivals, while stopping short of the vicious initial bite a true race supermoto serves up. For day-to-day riding that balance reads just right: hard to fool in traffic, with a clear reserve still tucked away for the moment the road ahead turns urgent.

Judge this motor by where it wants to work and it comes off well. Down low it's got real shove, so around town and in slow, congested traffic you sit a gear high and let torque do the job the gearbox would otherwise do. The carburetor deserves credit here: roll the throttle and the answer is immediate and clean, no flat spot, no hunting for a live part of the rev range. For knifing through streets and linking short bursts of corners, the bottom end is plenty. Ask it to climb, though, and the story sours. The higher it spins the less it gives, and the aggression a younger rider goes looking for up top simply isn't there. To my ear the pipe has been choked hard to clear the noise and emissions bars of its day, and the engine feels held well short of what it could mechanically do. The ratios compound the frustration by sitting too long across the board, so the tallest gear runs into a wall and quits pulling before it should. I'd treat a smaller countershaft sprocket at the first service as a done deal rather than a maybe, and I'd keep a slip-on in the back of my mind, because freed up this could be a very different animal.

What stays with me about the FMX has less to do with cushioning than with reach. Honda drew this bike around riders the supermoto world usually shrugs off. The stock perch suits anyone of middling stature or shorter, a lower option sits in the parts catalog for boots that want more air beneath them, and every lever, pedal and grip falls to hand at a scale a petite build can actually work. I'd put a newcomer on it without a second thought. The thumper's pulse still travels up into the seat, no hiding that, yet the counterbalancer files the edge off so it never grates, and I stitched together a hard run of alpine switchbacks with only one splash of fuel before the padding started to protest. For a lone-piston machine that's a solid innings. The bill comes due for the long-limbed. Once you climb past an average build the cabin starts to crowd you, and a rider carrying real height should throw a leg over one first, because the geometry plainly rewards a compact frame and leaves everyone stretched taller a little boxed in.

Ride the FMX where it belongs and its modest output stops mattering. Give it a road that's all bends and gradient with nothing you'd honestly call a straight, and it comes alive out of all proportion to its paper figures. The low-rev grunt keeps you in the correct gear without a thought, the agile, light-feeling chassis flows from one apex to the next, and it keeps daring you on toward the following corner. There's mischief in it, too: getting the front wheel up on the clutch takes a flick rather than a fight, and it stays composed up there, which says a lot about how forgiving it is for a machine aimed partly at beginners. The one hard ceiling shows on a highway pass, where you go looking for a surge the engine simply can't produce. Point it at twisting, cramped back roads instead and very little at this size hands you this much grin.

Here's where the FMX asks you to swallow a compromise. Flip the seat up and the cavity beneath swallows a first-aid kit and nothing more, so the instant you need to carry anything real you're bolting on the accessory rack, which is less buying capability than paying to plug a gap the design left open. The controls tell the second half of the story. Everything functions, but the gauges, the ignition and the switches all feel a class below the bike they're fitted to, and the moment your fingers land on them the cost-cutting announces itself. What makes it stick out is the company it keeps: the frame and especially the fork sit well above their apparent price, so the cheapness at your fingertips has nowhere to hide. Neither gripe undoes what the FMX gets right, but both belong on your radar before you buy.