Benelli TRK 251 – Does Benelli’s Quarter Litre ADV make any sense?

Benelli has launched a new 250CC adventure bike called the TRK 251. This is sort of a little brother to their own TRK 502 series of bikes. Now I jointly run a two wheeler YouTube channel called Ignite Motorrad which you can view by clicking here so I decided to take the new Benelli for a spin and find out what’s what. Fortunately I was able to get my hands on the bike for 4 days thanks to a close family friend of ours so I could really get a feel of the machine. I’ve made a full detailed review video of this bike as well which you can watch by clicking on the embedded link below.

  

We don’t have a lot of great usable roads in India, there are a lot of portholes, badly made speed breakers and all that. Adventure tourers like the Hero XPulse (at a low price point) and Triumph Tiger (at a very high price point) have the ability to soak up these irregularities and deliver a comfortable ride to the rider. However as this Benelli has proven to me over the past few weeks, looks can be rather deceiving. The ‘clothes’ this baby TRK wears are very much ADV looking but as soon as I started riding it the bike began telling me a different story. It feels distinctly like a street bike, a naked bike which standard suspension with ordinary levels of travel. The tyres are road tyres not knobbly ones made to grip surfaces that aren’t roads. Yes the posture is very much that of a long distance tourer but the rest of the bike is a classic case of a sheep in wolf’s clothing. It’s a great bike no question about that but it isn’t what it appears to be. You’ll know exactly what I’m talking about in the review video where I delve a little more into the technicals of the bike.

 

For a person looking for a blend between a bike for city commute as well as occasional highway riding this is quite a good machine but even there I can see scope for improvement. The engine is rather punchy but feels down on power at the top end especially considering it’s more expensive than the KTM Adventure 250 which has more power and features.

 

A lot of Benelli’s bikes in India have entered competitive segments like this one and have become buyer favorites. The 600i make 4 cylinder nakeds accessible to the people and the TNT 300 did the same for the twin cylinder nakeds. The TRK 251 has also entered a very competitive segment here but in my opinion it’s a bit of a hit and miss. The TRK’s strongest point is its comfortable seating for both rider and pillion and supremely relaxed posture. The engine could be better, the gearbox could be smoother, the suspension probably should have had more travel considering it’s being marketed as an adventure bike and the price of 2.51 lakh rupees ex-showroom should have been lower in order for the bike to be in a more competitive place. The buyer demographic for this vehicle then is a very specific one and even so I’d recommend test riding the other options in the segment just to be safe. Benelli has an uphill task here of improving this bike so that it can truly play in the big leagues.