Motorcycle manufacturer Benda is bucking the trend of Chinese companies simply copying western designs by taking innovation into its own hands.

Benda Heading Down the Turbocharging route

The Chinese are nothing if not good plagiarists. Actually, let me re-phrase that: they are plagiarists, just not always that good at it. For evidence, look at these two very bad Ducati V4 rip-offs.

However, it is unfair to tar all Chinese motorcycle manufacturers with the same brush. There are some that are really trying to do the right thing in their own way without resorting to copying what anyone else is doing.

We've featured Benda on topspeed.com before now. There was the unveiling of two V4 engines here and the LFC400 here, both of which showed original thinking.

Now, comes news of yet another bit of innovation in the form of a 300cc engine.

Er.....hang on! What's so innovative about that?

Well, it just so happens that not only is it a tiny V-twin engine, but it is also turbocharged.

At the beginning of 2021, Benda showed us images of a fully-faired sports bike, called the VTR-300 Turbo. Details were thin on the ground, but it didn't take a genius to decipher the name as meaning a 300cc v-twin with a turbocharger. It sounded intriguing but would it ever see the light of day?

Well, apparently it will. New patent drawings show the final styling of the bike which reveal fairly standard faired sports bike styling that could be a new model from Kawasaki.

But it's what's happening under the skin that matters. The 300cc engine is already in use in the VTC-300 cruiser model, albeit in un-turbocharged form. In that form it makes 30bhp, its long stroke making it torque-focussed.

Bolting a turbocharger to it could up the power output by as much as 40-50bhp and that, surely is the whole point of turbocharging or supercharging: give a small engine the performance of a larger engine but with the fuel economy of the smaller engine. Kawasaki might have created an incredible flagship with the H2, but wouldn't it have been more remarkable if they had given a 500 or 600cc bike the performance of a litre superbike?

The images show that the frame is a tubular affair, while the bodywork is relatively conventional, as is the overall shape and style. But, if the VTR-300 Turbo does make it into production and, more importantly, out of China into western markets, it could be a game changer for the small bike market.