The eagerly awaited Yamaha YZF R25 has finally made its international debut. It has been launched in the Indonesian market for 53 million Indonesian Rupiah (Rs 2.71 lakh). The 250cc motorcycle will be available in three paint schemes- racing blue, black predators, and diablo red. Deliveries of the bike will commence from July, this year.
The sporty twin-headlamps, the air duct in the middle and LED tail lamps make it stand apart from the rest of the Yamaha YZF-R range and other quarter-litre bikes. It gets an advanced instrument console which integrates a shift indicator light, fuel consumption indicator, oil change indicator, trip meter as well as displays the fuel-injector diagnostics, gear position and engine temperature.
Pitted as a 'superbike you can ride every day', the YZF R25 is powered by an eight-valve 250cc four-stroke parallel-twin engine. The liquid-cooled DOHC engine produces 35.5bhp at 12,000rpm and 22.1Nm of torque at 10,000 rpm through a six-speed manual gearbox.
Unlike the YZF R15 and the YZF R125, Yamaha has gone in for a tubular diamond frame with electrodeposition coating for the YZF R25, putting it in the league of the Kawasaki Ninja 300 and the Honda CBR 250R. The YZF R25 gets a beefy 41mm telescopic front fork unit and runs on 110/70 tyres in the front and 140/70 at the rear. The 166kg weight, the perfect 50:50 weight distribution coupled with high-revving short stroke motor and the peaky power delivery should make the YZF R25 a fun motorcycle to ride.
Yamaha says that the YZF R25 has been developed keeping ASEAN and developing markets in mind. Despite being called ‘baby-M1’, the YZF R25 doesn’t bear much resemblance to the MotoGP racer. The design however, hasn’t strayed very far from the R25 concept which was globally unveiled last year and in India at the 2014 Delhi Auto Expo. The bike is expected to be launched in India later this year.