Zongshen

Zongshen Cyclone RC401
By Ben Purvis

Zongshen is one of China's most well-established bike makers and one that's respected enough to have partnered with Piaggio among others. Now the company has launched its sportiest-ever machine in the form of the Cyclone RC401.
Built around the company's own 33 kW (44 hp) 401 cc parallel twin, the RC401 has already been shown a couple of times, initially wearing the 'RC3S' name before settling on the 'RC401' name. It has now gone on sale in China as part of a growing class of 400 cc sports models, and given the fact that Zongshen's machines have been sold under various brand names in Europe and the USA before, there's a good chance it will emerge on global markets in the future - though not necessarily wearing Zongshen or Cyclone branding.

Featuring a trellis-style steel frame, LED lights and upside-down forks, as well as twin front discs with Bosch ABS, the RC401 weighs in at 178 kg wet - not as light as some rivals, but not as unexpectedly heavy as some Chinese-made bikes.
Visually, the RC401 is a convincing machine, ticking all the modern sports bike boxes with those LED lights tucked between a pair of nose-mounted air intakes, and small winglets flanking them on the fairing sides.
On board, it leverages the fact that China is overflowing with electronics brands, churning out low-cost colour LCD screens, offering a large, configurable TFT display in sharp contrast to some of the old-fashioned looking instruments that more established brands still use on their cheaper models. There are even backlit bar control blocks, although Zongshen has stopped short of adopting the keyless ignition set-up that several Chinese rivals are using.