Maybe you’ve seen the inexpensive China-built motorcycles circulating the internet and thought to yourself “A new dirt bike for $1400? There’s no way. That’s gotta be too good to be true.” In some ways, you’d be right. 

Once you click the button to buy this new 250cc street-legal bike from Amazon, a crate is shipped to your house or place of business (possibly not in the color you ordered) packed full of motorcycle parts. You’ll have to use your own mechanical genius to get the bike assembled because this doesn’t even come with simplified Ikea-style instruction pictographs. Also, because it’s a flat-pack motorcycle from China, chances are high that the bike will come standard with some scuff marks and a clear plastic bag full of extra parts. 

Once it’s all together, however, it rides like any 14-horsepower bike really should. It’s rough and tumble, ready for just about anything you can throw at it. Is a Honda 250 going to be a higher quality bike that will last you longer? Yeah, probably, but good luck finding even a decade-old example for less than four grand. As bargains go, you could rip through three of these Chinese bikes before you come close to matching the price of a well-used Craigslist find. 

As the Bikes & Beards crew found out, this Hawk motorcycle has just about everything you need to go for a rip in the dirt. It could use a bit more power, but with niceties like electric start and a fuel gauge, it provides a cheap cost of entry to one of the most fun two-wheel pastimes in the world.

I have one question, though. Where and how do you get replacement parts? When I run through the brake pads am I going to need to buy a new bike to get them?  

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