Fantic Imola 125 looks to surf the sport bike resurgence
The Fantic Imola is a 125cc sports bike, featuring a Yamaha-derived four-stroke engine, Brembo brakes, and advanced electronics.
The Italian brand Fantic might be best known in recent years for its line of trick off-roaders and retro scramblers (see the Caballero 700), but a new bike unveiled at EICMA, seems to point in a more track-focused direction.
The bike is called the Imola, and as you’d expect for a bike named after one of Italy’s most famous racing venues, it’s a lightweight and advanced sports bike, with the heart of a Yamaha and high-spec chassis components.
Starting with the engine, the 125cc unit is the four-stroke, four-valve as found in bikes like the Yamaha MT-125 and YZF-R125. In this form, the Minarelli-built single makes a learner licence-friendly 15bhp, but the engine isn’t the most exciting element of the new bike.
Fantic joined the Moto2 ranks in 2023, and part of the learnings from the World Championship have helped to shape the construction of the bike’s frame. Because of this, the new Imola 125 utilises a hybrid frame that relies on both steel and aluminium in its construction. The swingarm is a full aluminium item, and both ends of the bike feature fully adjustable suspension which is mated to high-spec Brembo brakes. Those brakes are also backed up by an advanced IMU control system, meaning cornering ABS and lean-sensitive traction control - both fairly punchy additions in the 125cc category.
There is a question mark that remains over the new bike though, as the vehicle seen above is being referred to by the brand as a ‘track concept’. That means that should it make it to full production, the final spec and features of the road-going machine could be very different, and decidedly less exciting, than the bike you can see before you.
Fantic did though also wheel out a much more realistic-looking offering at the show. It’s called the Stealth (above), and it’s very closely related to the Imola utilising the same frame and engine platform. It is though a much more realistic-looking machine, and as you can see from the images shared by Fantic, it’s also a more complete and production-ready machine.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
