Yamaha YS125: Last of the Breed

Let's have a brief look at the Yamaha YS125. It's not often that I write about motorbikes, but it's 2024 and I've recently passed my motorcycle test, so I'm in an up-beat mood. The YS125 is a learner-legal 125cc motorbike sold by Yamaha from 2017 to around 2021, as a replacement for the decade-old YBR125. NB It has nothing to do with the Yamaha YZ125, which is a motocross bike, or the Yamaha Y125Z, a scooter.

The YBR125 was apparently very popular, with sales of over 150,000 units. I have no idea how well the YS125 sold, but I have seen a few here and there, including this one in Trieste, Italy:

Some 125cc motorbikes are sold in Europe with 150cc or 200cc engines - 150cc is the minimum requirement for the Italian autostrada - but as far as I can tell the YS was only available as a 125.

I bought mine to learn how to ride a geared motorbike. Now that I've passed my test my YS125 is in theory surplus to requirements, but it sips petrol and doesn't take up much space, and one of the few good things about being middle-aged is that motorcycle insurance is cheap.

The YS125 represents an interesting turning-point in the evolution of modern motorbikes. A long time ago all of the big motorbike manufacturers had a boring, ordinary 125cc learner model - neither a sports nor an adventure nor a custom bike - but now only Honda has a standard learner bike, the CB125F, which is yours for just over £3000. Where did they all go?

There's still a huge demand for 125cc motorbikes, but the entry-level end of the market is now dominated by cheap imports from China. Chinese bikes are controversial. There's a stereotype that they're unreliable and don't last. It's not that Chinese manufacture is inherently rubbish. The YS125 itself was made in China. It's just that importers in Europe and the UK tend to import the absolute dregs.

On top of that the Japanese manufacturers have all gone upmarket. Yamaha's nearest modern equivalent of the YS125 is the XSR125, which is considerably more capable but also a lot more expensive, at £4800 (vs £2800 for the YS125 in its final year). Yamaha's other entry-level 125 is the sporty MT-125, at £5000.

Honda has a range of 125cc motorbikes, but they're mostly novelty models such as the pint-sized Grom or the semi-automatic Super Cub 125. Other 125s from other manufacturers, such as the Kawasaki Ninja and the Suzuki GSX, are aimed at the sporty market, and so the basic commuter 125 is a dying breed, on the endangered list.

What's the YS125 like? Agricultural. Part of the reason for its obscurity is that it was essentially a continuation of the 2005-onwards Yamaha YBR125. The YBR125 was originally sold with a carburettor, a kickstarter, and an old-fashioned round headlight, but by the end of production it had been updated with electronic fuel injection and plastic fairings. The YS125 added a slightly larger fuel tank, a tweaked engine that complied with EURO 4 emissions standards - the YS125 is ULEZ-compliant - and a simple digital dashboard:

It also added a linked braking system. From 2016 onwards European standards required that new motorcycles have ABS, or alternatively a braking system that linked the front and rear brakes. The YS125 has a disc brake at the front but a drum at the back, so Yamaha added a linked braking system. It's odd. When I press the rear brake pedal the front brake lever moves slightly. The rear brake itself is designed to stop the bike on a hill, but it's not particularly effective otherwise, which is something that tripped me up slightly when learning to ride a bigger bike, but more of that later.

Yamaha's publicity materials quoted a fuel consumption of 2L/100km, which is 140mpg, but most reviews suggested a range of 300 miles from its 14-litre tank, which equals around 100-120mpg or so. That's still not bad. I find that £10 of fuel takes it from a couple of bars on the meter to full. The fuel meter is such that I can start off at two bars and reach my destination with three bars, perhaps from the tank tilting in the corners.

Performance-wise Yamaha claimed 7.4kw at 7400rpm, which is just slightly less than 10bhp. In the UK the legal learner limit is 14bhp, and I can confirm that the YS125 is not a rev-happy speed demon. Let's talk about the good and bad things.

Not long after writing this post I did a short video ride around Salisbury's Woodford Valley on one of 2024's rare sunny days.

Good Stuff
The YS125 is almost purpose-designed for commuting in a city. It's slow off the lights, but it keeps pace with ordinary cars and vans. It chugs along easily at 20mph, 30mph, and 40mph in second, third, and fourth gears - 20mph falls slightly between second and third gears, perhaps because a 20mph limit was still unusual in 2017, when the bike was new. It weighs around 120kg and I have no trouble moving it around. I am six feet tall, and I can easily, easily get both feet on the ground while sitting in the seat.

It's physically tiny, and it doesn't look aggressive, so I find that squeezing in between traffic isn't a problem at all. No-one waves, no-one shouts, I have not been glared at. Parking is easy.

My commute amounts to around 50 miles a week, and every three weeks or so I have to buy £10 of petrol. The bike doesn't smell of petrol, and it doesn't leak oil all over the place. Maintenance consists of periodically wiping off and lubricating the chain and checking the oil level. Yamaha sold a top-box as an accessory, although there are also aftermarket mounts that allow for panniers. As far as I know the battery, fuses, wheels, probably chain are shared with the YBR, which was on sale for ages, so parts are still widely available.

As a recently-qualified motorcyclist I can't comment about the handling. The only time my knees have touched the ground while owning my YS125 have been while I was changing the oil (it takes one litre of 10W40 and has a separate filter). But, again, in town I can easily wend my way around vans, pedestrians, bollards etc.

Bad Stuff

As mentioned up the page performance is sluggish. I noticed this after doing my motorcycle training and my test. Moving from a 650cc Kawasaki back to the YS125 was a striking experience. In particularly it needs a fistful of revs to pull away at more than walking pace. Up to 50mph it keeps up with traffic, topping out at around 65mph in fifth gear, although I have only briefly touched that speed, and the speedo over-indicates, so it was probably more like 60mph.

The biggest problem is handling - not so much cornering but staying planted on bad roads. On regular roads the YS125 doesn't have a problem, although it tends to smash over potholes, but it copes poorly with ruts. It has a habit of tramlining, as if it wants to follow ruts in the road rather than bumping over them, and in general I wouldn't want to ride in the countryside in poor weather at high speed on a YS125. On the other hand mine still has stock tyres, so perhaps the problem is the tyres.

That's about all the bad stuff I can think of. It has no integral storage at all, beyond a small compartment for a toolkit, but that's motorcycles for you. Did I mention the toolkit? It comes with a toolkit:

The lack of storage makes it awkward if you're going to be a delivery driver. Where are you going to put your helmet and security chain, hmm? Despite the sluggish performance it's still inherently fun to ride a motorbike though, and as a tool for learning how to use gears it worked in my case, as I now have a full motorcycle licence.

On the used market prices from dealers vary from £1000 or so to £1800 depending on condition. A scan of eBay suggests that anything less than £1000 has masses of rust, and anything above £2000 is wishful thinking, bearing in mind that a brand-new Honda CB125F is only £3000. The YBR is still widely available used, and older YBRs have a classic, retro look that has aged well, although I have no idea if the YBR was ULEZ-compliant or not.

Incidentally, the YBR's predecessor was the carburetted SR125, which looks great but dates back to the 1980s. My hunch is that the few SR125s available nowadays are valuable antiques. There was also a 250cc version of the YBR, with a 21 bhp engine. To confuse matters Yamaha still seems to sell a version of the YBR125 in Pakistan, as the YB125Z-DX, but it's not formally imported into the UK.

Is that it? Can I stop now? My impression is that the equivalent Honda, the CBF125, holds its value slightly better, and judging by the reviews the Honda had one extra horsepower. But I imagine that either one will teach you how to ride a geared bike, after which you have the choice of selling it to the next student, or keeping it and using it for errands.

Peugeot Tweet 125: Because Somebody Has To

Let's have a look at the Peugeot Tweet 125, a 125cc scooter sold by Peugeot. Despite being on the market for almost fifteen years the Tweet is surprisingly obscure. The internet has one professional review, from Motorcycle News. I've only ever seen a handful in the wild, including this one in Turin, Italy:

The Tweet is actually made by SYM of Taiwan. It's a rebadged SYM Symphony 125, identical except for the badges. Peugeot sells the Tweet here in the UK for around £2800, vs around £2500 for a Symphony, but I live near a Peugeot dealership, and they threw in a top box, so that swayed my hand. Mine is the 2023 model. There's a slightly more modern update that has USB charging and a different headlight arrangement.

Why did I buy a scooter? Two reasons. I've managed to avoid learning to drive a motorised vehicle right up to middle age. Partially because I lived in London for several years, and also because the places I like to visit - Italy, for example - have great public transport. Or in the case of Greenland the only roads are dirt tracks.

But knowing how to drive will be a useful skill at some point, and a 125cc scooter is a handy way to learn the roads, so I booked a Compulsory Basic Training course and bought a cheap scooter. Two years later I am now a fully-licenced A-class motorcyclist, and perhaps at some point I'll learn how to drive a car, just in time for them to be banned, or something.

The other reason is that I have a soft spot for Italy. I remember the first time I went there. I was envious of the Italians buzzing around on their scooters. I had nothing like that when I was a kid. Here in the UK scooters are surprisingly unpopular - everybody gets a car instead, perhaps because of the weather - but in Italy they're all over the place:

Now that I have a motorcycle licence I can in theory hire a scooter when I'm abroad, but I really need a bit of practice before tackling Italy's roads. In the UK scooters have taken off over the last few years for delivery drivers, but they have to compete with bicycles and electric scooters, which don't even require a training certificate. Hanging over them all is a looming transition to electric motors, which will hit the scooter market hard, because it's difficult to put a big battery into a small scooter and sell it cheaply.

Peugeot has a modest range of scooters. The two most popular are the hilariously-named Speedfight, a 50cc model that looks like a much bigger scooter, and the Django, a good-looking Vespa clone. The Tweet is Peugeot's budget model, seemingly inspired by the Honda SH125. As with the SH125 it has 16" wheels at the front and back, vs 12" or 13" on most other scooters. Peugeot even calls it "the big-wheel scooter". Larger wheels cope better with potholes, which is useful in the UK.

Ye gods, it's filthy

The Tweet has the same GY6-style four-stroke engine as every other scooter in the world. It makes a soft burble when it idles and the electronic starter catches on the second beat. The engine is EURO 5 emissions compliant, and according to TFL's website the Tweet doesn't trigger the ULEZ charge. It has front and rear disc brakes with ABS, which actually makes it more sophisticated than my Yamaha YS125 motorbike. Transmission is automatic, with a CVT belt. Supercharger? No.

The internet gives varying figures for power, but the manual says 7.5kw, which is just over 10bhp, four less than the legal maximum. It weighs around 120kg with fuel. I have no trouble moving it around. There's also a 150cc model, not sold in the UK, that has one more horsepower. The 150cc model exists because that's the legal minimum capacity for the Italian autostrada.

I've driven my Tweet on a dual carriageway, and on the flat it will sustain 65mph, although the experience is terrifying.

Back in July 2023 I visited Middle Wallop's Wings and Wheels festival on this very scooter.

The 2023-model Tweet doesn't have USB charging, or a navigation system, or anything fancy. It's interesting to compare it with my YS125. Instinctively I would expect the motorcycle to be faster, but the Tweet actually feels more rapid off the line and up to 50mph, perhaps because it's lighter, or perhaps the CVT is more efficient than my left foot, or the technology is more modern. The suspension is softer, and the tyres tend to bash over potholes and ruts rather than tramlining, so it actually feels more stable.

The one problem is riding at dead-slow speeds. With a manual-clutch motorcycle this isn't too hard, but the Tweet activates neutral below a certain speed, so it has trouble crawling forwards at walking pace. I find myself lurching forward, then gently coasting. This isn't really specific to the Tweet, it's a consequence of CVTs in general.

125cc motorcycles and scooters are frustrating. They're just slightly too little for general motoring in the UK, at least outside a city. It's not so much the performance, which is van-like, but the fact that 125cc bikes and scooters tend to have weak suspension and brakes. There's a market on the continent for beefed-up 200-300cc scooters, but here in the UK the licensing requirements are such that mid-sized maxi-scooters are very rare. Above the age of 24 it makes sense to get a full A-class manual licence, at which point why not buy a full-sized motorcycle, hmm? Only a few riding schools in the UK even have an A or A2-compliant automatic scooter on which to perform the necessary tests.

Still, back to the Tweet. The storage box isn't quite large enough for a full helmet, doubly so once I stow away my padlock and chain, which means that the rear top-box is almost mandatory. The storage compartment appears to be airtight. If I leave a damp cloth inside it the compartment quickly starts to smell musty.

The Tweet is compatible with E5 fuel. The manual says that the tank has a capacity of five litres, but I find that after depleting the tank to a flashing single bar on the meter the most I can put in, with the scooter on the centre stand, is around four litres, which is around £5.60. The manual also suggests a fuel consumption of around 84mpg, which seems reasonable enough. A lot of petrol stations claim that they will only dispense a minimum of five litres of fuel, so I always feel slightly guilty when I fill my Tweet.

I bought mine brand-new with a discount in February 2023 and have driven it for just over 2000 miles, with a professional service at the 500-mile change-the-manufacturer's-oil mark. For the first 500km the manual recommends not sustaining more than half-throttle, and from 500-1000km not more than three-quarters throttle.

During the time I've owned it the only trouble was on the hottest day of 2023, when the temperature reached around 32c - and only then it was slightly slow to start. During the winter, at temperatures of just below 0c, it starts, then seems to bog a little bit, but quickly settles. Beyond that it starts with two chugs of the motor every time. Tell a lie; shortly after getting it the motor wouldn't start at all, but that's because I forgot to flick the yellow cutoff switch (visible in the photo above) to the UNLOCK position. Whoops.

Any other problems? The left headlight stalk tends to trap water, perhaps because the bike sits tilted to that side when it's at rest. I find that even a day after it has rained the stalk continues to drip, which makes me wonder if it'll rust out. But the stalk itself unscrews easily - you have to do that to fit a mobile phone mount - and spares are readily available.

Do I have anything else to say about the Tweet? Over the course of a year it hasn't let me down, and although I've passed my test I have no plans to sell it, because it's handy. In the UK it tends to be overshadowed by the Honda Vision 110, which has slightly less power but much better fuel consumption. The Vision 110 is the same price, £2800, and it's a Honda. Everybody likes Honda. "You meet the nicest people on a Honda."

Within Peugeot's own range the Django is much more striking, and as mentioned the Tweet is essentially a SYM Symphony, so it's technically not a Peugeot. It has to be said that Peugeot hasn't gone out of its way to sell the Tweet, and I was wary of buying one because "what the heck is a Peugeot Tweet?". But I like it, and I'll probably end up riding it until the exhaust rusts out and petrol motors are banned, because it's incredibly easy to drive and keeps up with traffic.