Oaxaca Day 3: the utility motorcycles

There are a lot of motor­cy­cles in Oax­a­ca, and the vast major­i­ty are work­ing motor­cy­cles, not recre­ation­al rides. Here are a few of the bikes I spot­ted today, includ­ing a few brands you prob­a­bly haven’t seen in the US.

Every man­u­fac­tur­er rep­re­sent­ed in Mex­i­co has a 125 sin­gle, they are the work­hors­es of the city couri­er and deliv­ery rid­er scene here. This lit­tle blue Bajaj ‘Wind 125’ is a rel­a­tive­ly new a clean example:

And these are Ven­to’s DS-styled work­horse, called the ‘work­man’:

Saw this blue BMW whizz by today and what a bit sur­prised; BMW’s are not a com­mon sight here in oax­a­ca, this is an expen­sive motor­cy­cle here:

Obvi­ous­ly this Ven­to 200 cruis­er has aspi­ra­tions above it’s cur­rent lot in life:

Here’s some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, a Suzu­ki TS185 two-stroke, with a lit­tle added style via a cus­tom tank paint job:

This is Yama­ha’s lit­tle 125, called a Pul­sar, I think. This par­tic­u­lar one appears to have been draft­ed into gov­er­ment service:

This is one of the local­ly man­u­fac­tured knock-offs of the Hon­da CG125 cargo:

and this is anoth­er of the local knock-offs. This par­tic­u­lar exam­ple is pret­ty typ­i­cal of the con­di­tion you see on the street. If you look care­ful­ly, you’ll see that it has no bezel or glass over the instru­ments any longer.
Obvi­ous­ly, Hon­da real­ly hit the nail on the head with the CG125, every­one makes a copy now!

And this is the pin­na­cle of local­ly made bikes, an Ita­li­ka EX200. a 200cc air-cooled sin­gle, wrapped in swoopy body­work and snazzy exhaust cans!

well, that’s all for today, folks. might not be a post tomor­row, as it’s Inde­pen­dence day down here, and we’ll be down­town tomor­row evening for the fire­works and cel­e­brat­ing! Viva Mexico!

enjoy, y’all!
black­dog