BUSH RANGER
Our first local ride of the CFMoto 800MT adventure tourer has been a long time coming, but after two days blasting through twisting blacktop and corrugated gravel east of Melbourne, the wait was worth it.
While the 800MT has been on sale in Australia since January this year, we haven’t been able to get a hold of a testbike until now, because the first shipment of 105 bikes was all but sold-out to customers who had placed a refundable deposit on CFMoto’s new adventure tourer before even laying eyes on it. But that’s not surprising when you consider how much bike these customers were expecting to get for their money – as well as, thrown in at no extra cost, $899 worth of bonus accessories, consisting silver side crash bars, a black radiator protector and black headlight guard.
THE BIKE
There are two models in the CFMoto 800MT lineup, with the base-spec 800MT Sport priced at $12,990 ride away and the up-spec 800MT Touring at $14,490 ride away. Both are powered by the same KTM (CFMoto-built) 799cc parallel twin that makes a claimed 70kW of power and 77Nm of torque, mated to a six-speed gearbox and mounted in a tubular-steel frame. There’s fully adjustable KYB suspension front and rear, in the form of a 43mm USD fork with 160mm of travel, and a monoshock with 150mm of travel. Both also wear a 19-inch front and 17-inch rear wheel combination, with the Sport running cast alloy wheels and the Touring equipped with more off-road oriented wire-spoked rims.
Despite the
