Description

May 2023 - The Chinese brand Xinyuan has come out with a cool new motorcycle called the Tornado 520.

June 2023 - The new Shineray XY 500B-C is already for sale in Asia badged as the Xinyuan Tornado 520.

Mash Motorcycles may be offering these bikes. Mash sells hip, retro made-in-China bikes. If you’re familiar with the Cleveland CycleWerks line, it’s basically the same idea. The Mash lineup ranges from 50cc to 650cc.

While most of the Mash lineup is scramblers, enduros, dirt trackers, that sort of thing, Mash also sells a sidecar rig in some countries. The Mash Side Force 400 is built around a small air-cooled, fuel-injected single-cylinder engine that makes about 30 hp. In the EU, the asking price is about €11,499. Not cheap, but much more affordable than a Ural.

That’s enough to bring in some customers, but 30 hp isn’t very much muscle to push around a sidecar rig on modern roads. Now, though, we see that Shineray (the Chinese manufacturer who builds these bikes for Mash) has a new option coming to some markets. The new Shineray XY 500B-C is already for sale in Asia badged as the Xinyuan Tornado 520, and it seems likely Mash will also adopt this bike soon.

The Shineray XY 500B-C uses the same basic liquid-cooled parallel twin design that Chinese OEMs are cranking out by the tractor-trailer load, with strong resemblance to Honda’s 471cc parallel twin. It’s supposed to make around 50 horsepower, which might be enough to at least get this rig out of its own way on a back road or secondary highway. You still probably don’t want to challenge the Autobahn, though.

The Shineray sidecar setup comes in at a much lower price than its Ural equivalent, but it also comes with a single wheel drive. Ural setups come with a selectable 2WD system, where the sidecar wheel can be engaged to get the hack unstuck. Not so with Shineray’s rigs. The Shineray sidecar setups also come with chain drive, instead of shaft drive like the Urals.