Brixton

Brixton Crossfire Café Racer

Brixton's 500 cc Crossfire has already become a three-model range, with the more upright Crossfire X and scrambler-style Crossfire XC joining the original roadster. An adventure derivative - the Storr - was shown last year, and now it appears a café racer is also joining the range.

Brixton's bikes, while having design input from Europe, are made in China by Gaokin, which also sells the Crossfire under its own brand in that country as the GK500. It's under the Gaokin name that the Crossfire café racer has first appeared. Showing up in Chinese type-approval documents, it's instantly recognisable as a Crossfire, but the bars are much lower and narrower, there's a small cowling around the distinctive circular headlight and the detailing includes a hump-backed seat and bar-end mirrors, as well as retro knee pads on the tank. 

The result is clearly a 60s-inspired café racer, but one that retains the Crossfire's distinctive elements, most notably the sharp X-shaped crease on either side of the fuel tank.

Technically, the bike is largely unchanged from the standard model. It uses the same 35 kW (47 hp) parallel twin engine, which neatly slides into the A2 licence bracket in Europe, as well as the standard Crossfire's steel frame and swingarm. At 1,416 mm, the wheelbase is identical to the stock bike, as is the 190 kg wet weight.

Although the bike has yet to be officially unveiled, it's clearly intended to join the Gaokin range in the near future, and since the existing Brixton Crossfire line-up exactly mirrors the Gaokin GK500 model range, it's likely that a rebadged version of this machine will be exported in Brixton form once production is underway.