Zeths ZFR 500 R

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The Zeths ZFR 500 R is a retro-styled, middleweight sportbike, but is unlikely to find its way to the US. (Zeths/)

Back at the start of this year pictures circulated of a retro-style, fully faired sportbike from the little-known Zeths brand—one of dozens of young Chinese motorcycle companies. At the time there wasn’t much information about the bike, but now the ZFR 500 R has been certified for production in China, proving it’s more than just a speculative concept bike and also revealing its key specifications.

There’s little chance the ZFR 500 R will be available globally, but the bike’s appearance alone makes it worth a look. Amid today’s increasingly aggressive and winglet-laden sportbikes, its 1980s-inspired style, fronted by a pair of circular lights, is refreshingly clean. There are overtones of the delectable Paton S1-R in the shape. Echoes of old endurance racers are reinforced by a single-sided swingarm—something that was originally designed for rapid tire changes in racing, long before being adopted as a styling cue for streetbikes—and a removable cover for one of the headlights.

In terms of specifications, the ZFR 500 R isn’t jaw-dropping. It’s powered by a 494cc parallel twin, built in-house by Zeths but based on the identically sized twin used in various Loncin and Voge-branded models. The same design can trace its roots back to an earlier 471cc motor, near-identical to the Honda CB500 parallel twin. In the Zeths, the engine is rated at 53 hp, and given the bike’s wet weight of 428 pounds the resulting performance will be adequate rather than astounding.

A long 56.7-inch wheelbase means the Zeths is larger than it initially appears; there are plenty of liter-class sportbikes that are shorter. But that bulk helps with the ‘80s-inspired proportions. The type-approval specs also show it has 120/70-17 front and 160/60-17 rear rubber, and that ABS is standard equipment on brakes that use four-pot Brembo radial-mount calipers and twin discs at the front. On board, the retro illusion shatters thanks to the presence of a TFT color screen in place of conventional analog instruments.

Surprisingly, the ZFR 500 R isn’t the only neo-retro, 494cc parallel twin sportbike heading for the market in the near future. Another little-known brand, AW is also progressing with a similar project. Using the Loncin-made version of the same twin featured in the Zeths, the AW500N was first shown back in 2021 but has now been certified for the road in China, the second model from the brand after a more conventional, modern-looking sportbike using the same engine and chassis.

The competing AW500N uses a Loncin-made version of the same parallel twin displacing 494cc. (AW /)

Little is known about AW, even in China, but reports in the Chinese press suggest the brand is related to Benda, a company that’s starting to expand beyond the Chinese market with a range of V-twin cruisers, 700cc inline-fours, and most recently, a 500cc V-4 model. Compared to the 2021 show bike, the newly certified production model features wire-spoke wheels instead of alloys and has the 494cc engine instead of the earlier 471cc version. Coming in at 186 kilograms (410 pounds) the AW 500 is lighter than the Zeths, and its wheelbase is substantially shorter at 54.1 inches, but it’s also fractionally less powerful at 47.6 hp.

Would the Zeths or AW appeal to riders outside China? We’re unlikely to get the chance to find out, at least with this generation of bikes, but you only need to look at the nation’s car industry to see how rapidly that can change. In 2019, China was the world’s fourth-largest exporter of cars, behind Japan, Germany, and the United States. By the end of the first quarter of 2023, it had overtaken Japan to be the world’s number one, with exports around three times 2019 levels. China’s recent explosion of interest in large-capacity, gas-powered motorcycles is also indicative of a growing export push, in 2022 more than half of the internal combustion engine motorcycles manufactured in China were exported. The vast majority are still small-capacity models destined for Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but there’s a growing interest in manufacturing leisure-focused, larger motorcycles more suited to European and North American markets.

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