FANTIC CABALLERO 500

A PERFECT BALANCE

Here’s the thing, this 500 (as said, actually a true 449cc) motor is something of a peach. There’s a sense of balance and refinement that shouldn’t be a surprise, but is. Maybe because we’ve grown used to riding 650s and 690s, we’re anticipating slightly lumpy torque-laden acceleration. But being smaller, with less reciprocating mass – and even that smoothed by way of a counter balancer – the power comes in a little more linear with a sweeter smoother build. It doesn’t stumble at low revs either, and you can ride it right down to near tickover without the chain-slapping chugga-chugga that bigger singles often deliver. So you don’t need to ride at a minimum 3500rpm all the time, riding smoothly at least 1000rpm lower means you can ride through town just that little more chilled.

And the bottom-to-mid is impressive. Clean pick up and decent acceleration are there and these combined with a slick shifting well-spaced six-speed gearbox mean you make easy and nimble progress. And again, for a single it feels smooth. The surprise is there’s actually something of a screaming top end that goes with that. Often you have a choice – good low-end torque or top end rev – to have both is quite rare. When you analyse the specs you can see what we essentially have here is the equivalent of a 450cc enduro bike engine, at 40hp it’s what a CRF450L makes Stateside and pretty close to what European enduros are making, so on the cam the sound of the Scrambler 500 is unsurprisingly not unlike a competition-tuned 450 enduro. So instead of short shifting at around 5500rpm, you can hang on to the throttle and hold out for peak power at 7500rpm. It’s pretty sporty and sounds even more so on the over-run as the exhausts spit and pop as the revs come down.

Now I read the odometer on the test bike more than a little wrong (which is forgivable given the whole instrument console is a bit titchy) thinking it said 1480 miles when in fact the total mileage at time of testing was just 148 miles. So wringing out the poor Scrambler through the gears was probably not the go, but is what happened. And consequently while it didn’t feel as tight as it might, it did struggle to rev-out in top, so while fifth gear reached 80mph, sixth kind of plateaued at 90mph. At the time, not knowing the real mileage it felt to me like it was over geared, but perhaps it was just too new, with more (considerate) miles on the clock it will loosen up and could probably make 100mph, not that outright velocity is what this bike is about. It was riding nice and stable at these speeds, mind.