There are only so many ways to design a naked motorcycle. You need a fuel tank, a seat, two wheels, somewhere to put the engine, and ideally a headlight that doesn’t make the whole thing look like an angry kitchen appliance. Inevitably, motorcycles in the same category are going to resemble each other. But every once in a while, a new bike appears and makes you wonder whether someone had another manufacturer’s website open on the second monitor.
Meet the Rieju NKD 125. Rieju describes its new lightweight naked as having a “radical aesthetic” with plenty of attitude and personality. And to be fair, it certainly has attitude. There’s an angular LED headlight, muscular tank shrouds, an exposed tubular frame, a tiny belly pan, a stubby tail, and all the sharp creases you’d expect from a modern hyper-naked bike. There’s just one tiny problem: you’ve probably seen this motorcycle before.
Or at least something that looks suspiciously similar.
Put the NKD 125 next to a KTM 125 Duke and things get awkward pretty quickly. The proportions, exposed frame, angular bodywork, headlight treatment, tank silhouette, and general mini-streetfighter stance all speak remarkably fluent Duke. I’m not saying Rieju photocopied KTM’s homework, changed the answers slightly, and handed it in before class. I’m just saying I’d understand if KTM started checking whose name was written at the top of the page.
Mechanically, however, these aren’t the same motorcycle. Rieju’s 125 uses a liquid-cooled, fuel-injected single-cylinder engine paired with a six-speed transmission. It gets a high-strength steel tubular frame, 41mm inverted fork, Nissin two-piston front caliper, ABS, traction control, and a 320mm front brake disc. The bike weighs a claimed 331 pounds dry and has a low 780mm seat height.
The current KTM 125 Duke uses its own 124.99cc liquid-cooled single making about 15 horsepower, plus a steel trellis main frame, aluminum subframe, 43mm WP Apex fork, four-piston radial front caliper, cornering ABS, and Supermoto ABS. So no, this isn’t simply a Duke with Rieju stickers slapped onto the tank. The problem here isn’t what lies underneath. It’s the fact that Rieju apparently had an entire blank sheet of paper and still ended up somewhere remarkably familiar.
And that’s particularly frustrating because this is Rieju we’re talking about.
The Spanish company traces its origins to 1934, when Luis Riera Carré and Jaime Juanola Farrés started manufacturing bicycle accessories. Rieju later became deeply associated with lightweight motorcycles, mopeds, trials, and enduro machines. Its Marathon competition bikes helped the company rack up nine Spanish Enduro Championships in the 74cc and 80cc classes during the 1980s. This isn’t some mystery brand assembled five minutes ago from a catalog of generic parts.
Hell, Rieju has been building naked 125s for years. Its own history says the original NKD 125 arrived in 2005, while the RS3 NKD followed in 2012 and helped the company become one of the stronger players in the 125cc geared-motorcycle segment. Rieju has more than enough history, experience, and actual motorcycle-building credibility to come up with something recognizably its own... even if it's now heavily reliant on Chinese manufacturing than ever before.
That’s what makes the new NKD so weird. There’s nothing inherently wrong with outsourcing an affordable 125cc streetfighter to a manufacturing partner in China, and on paper, this one actually looks pretty decent. ABS, traction control, inverted suspension, LED lighting, and a six-speed gearbox make plenty of sense for newer riders. If it rides well and the price is right, it’ll probably do its job just fine.
And speaking of price, at 3,149 Euros, or about $3,645 USD, young riders can get a lot of bike for their buck, especially when you factor in the KTM 125 Duke's European starting price of 4,491 Euros (about $5,200 USD). But whether or not riders can accept the fact that this bike will be called a KTM copycat at every stoplight and bike night is a different story altogether.
And personally, I think Rieju deserves a higher bar precisely because it isn’t some anonymous newcomer. This is a company with more than 90 years of history to rummage through for inspiration, much of it involving genuinely cool motorcycles designed to get dirty and occasionally crashed at the Spanish countryside.
The NKD 125 didn’t need to look retro, either. It just needed to look like a Rieju. Instead, it looks an awful lot like somebody else’s KTM.
