Why The Honda CT125 Hunter Cub Fails As An Adventure Bike HD

Why the Honda CT125 Hunter Cub is not good enough - Low suspension travel - Costly price, can buy other full sized adventure bikes - Low top speed The Honda CT125 also known as the Hunter Cub is definitely an adventure motorcycle that I have been super excited about. The hunter cub seems like the perfect adventure bike, it has been marketed as the do it all adventure bike that is apocalypse proof. In 2019 at the Tokyo motor show Honda announced the new and improved CT125 hunter cub which improves on the previously successful honda 110. The hunter cub has a simple frame, with the wires and engine all purposefully exposed to make maintenance easy. It has a set of wire spoke wheels, crash bars and a luggage rack to complete the rugged look. It is a very lightweight bike only weighing 120 kilograms or 264 pounds. The hunter cub has disc ABS brakes on the front and rear. It provides 8.7 horsepower, 6.5 kilowatts and 8.1 pound foot of torque. It has a 1.4 gallon fuel tank and with a fuel consumption of 190 miles per gallon so therefore provides an impressive range of 221 miles on a full tank of fuel. With all of these specs in mind it definitely does seem like the perfect, travel anywhere and do it all motorcycle. But with some of these specs come some serious weaknesses, which compromise its ability to be taken seriously as an adventure bike. Although I’m going to tear it apart in this video, keep in mind that it is definitely a super capable adventure bike and one that I’d love to have in my garage. The first shortfall of the hunter cub is that it only has the ability of reaching a top speed of 65mph or 105kmh. And this is in a perfect world. In a real world scenario the bike seems to struggle to push past 100kmh and that would mean it’d be maxed out while on the highway and if you’re travelling uphill even more so. In countries like Australia and the US where you would be doing a lot of highway riding to get to trails that would be more suited to the bike, I can see this as a major annoyance, revving the bike for hours on the highway would be truly annoying. The second shortfall is its lack of suspension travel and ground clearance. The bike provides a front suspension travel of 3.9” and rear travel of 3.4”. The ground clearance is as high as only 6.5 inches. Compare this to a true adventure bike like the Yamaha WR250R which provides 10.6 inches of nicely damped suspension travel on both front and rear as well as a ground clearance of 11.8 inches. That is almost three times the suspension travel and almost twice the amount of ground clearance. To me it’s confusing as to how we can label a bike as the most epic adventure bike of all time when it provides less than half the amount of suspension travel and ground clearance as a true adventure bike. The final factor that absolutely disappoints me about the Honda Hunter Cub is the price in western markets. The bike is manufactured in Thailand like most Japanese motorcycles nowadays, there is no prob