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Honda Click 125i. Road Test by Jack Corbett In this Honda Click 125 roadtest I take it on a 136 km cross country trip from Pattaya to Rayong. To find out how it compares to a 135 c.c..Yamaha Nouvo Elegance and Yamaha Nouvo SX 125 in fuel economy, acceleration, and handling. 
So, I pit the little automatic against the semi trailer trucks and cars around me to get a real feel for how the little bike matches up to Yamaha's best automatics as well as its own stable mate, the 150 PCX. Then after checking the Honda Click's fuel economy, it's time to do a short slalom around the cones before turning it over to a good friend to get a second opinion of the Click's overall handling prowess. But on the way to Rayong and back, I find it necessary to time the Click's acceleration from zero to 50 kph and then from zero to 80 kph. I must do this because there's too much disinformation on the internet and elsewhere and too many self deceptive serving comments that might cause potential purchasers of small bikes to make the wrong decisions. But before getting to the nuts and bolts of my review let's first take a look at some of the small motorcycle myths that's being spread about these days.
A few myths you must completely disregard as total B.S.
This review should settle that last point. As to the other points of total b.s. somewhere within the Jack Corbett bike reviews you will learn the real truth. I might even suggest that you go to the Google search engine bar that appears at the bottom of the Alpha Pro pages to do your search. But considering this review is all about the Honda Click 125i and it's strengths and weaknesses let's take another look at Underbones.
My initial impression of the new Honda Click is that it accelerates quite well. And driving it around Pattaya I certainly did not find that it showed any signs of a lack of composure. My girlfriend's Filano does, and I don't know if it's because of the bike's small diameter 12 inch wheels or due to its floorboard arrangement that fails to tightly knit the bike's front and rear as tightly together as my Nouvo Elegance with all that bracing inside the plastic panels between the driver's legs. The Filano is a fun, nifty little bike with great styling, but it's not something I want to be flying down the highway on at anything over 25 miles an hour or so.
The first part of my mission is to do what's necessary to make sure that I get the best fuel consumption figures that I can. So I go to the same gas station I normally frequent here in Naklua and have the attendant fill my tank at the front pump on the right hand side of the fuel pumps. The tank's already full, but I must make sure that I fill it all the way. It costs me only about 15 baht which is something like 50 cents. I now have to make sure that once I do my long test loop to Rayong and back that I drive the bike to the exact same spot so that the lean angle is exactly the same. |
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Now armed with a full tank, I head out to route 36 to Rayong. It's still not quite 9 in the morning, and I figure that the traffic's going to be much lighter than what it's going to be later in the day. Once I'm out on the motorway, I average only 65 to 70 kilometers per hour which is less than I was averaging while I was doing earlier motorcycle comparative road tests with my Norwegian accomplice Peter. Peter had been with me when I tested my Yamaha Elegance against his Honda 125 PCX, when we ran my Elegance against a 125 Nouvo SX fuel injected rental, and when we finally ran a 150 c.c. PCX rental against his 125 c.c. PCX. Interestingly enough, my 135 cc. Yamaha with its outmoded carburetor turned in identical fuel mileage results as the Honda PCX and later the fuel injected Nouvo SX thus proving that the Nouvo 135 does not suffer from the lousy fuel economy that its detractors keep suggesting.
Let me put this in bold letters just so that you will never forget it. In our tests the Yamaha 135 c.c. Elegance got the exact same fuel economy that its supposedly much more efficient replacement the fuel injected 125 Nouvo SX had gotten. Moreover, it performed equally as well as the Honda PCX 125 did. For that matter the larger Honda PCX 150 got the same fuel mileage as the smaller 125 PCX that belonged to Peter.
If anyone wants to contest our findings, just go to the you tube video I just did on the Honda Click 125i and check out how I keep asking the filling station attendant to fill the Honda Click's tank all the way to the brim.
On the way to Rayong I decide to test the Honda Click's acceleration. It takes three attempts to get the job done, and that's only for the 0 to 50 kph stopwatch results. I don't have a stopwatch though. I've just ordered one which I will soon be picking up during a short trip to the U.S. So I must resort to using the stopwatch mode in my cell telephone. In the glare of the sun it's nearly impossible to see the display. On my first run out to fifty kph, I find that the display has timed out on me, and when I go back to getting the display turned back on, I find that the counter has gone back to zero. On my second attempt, I'm still in the narrow lane that all the bikes use on the left side of the highway when I see a Thai motorcyclist barreling right at me, going as half the Thais keep insisting on doing, against the flow of the traffic. I'm doing about 35 kph when I abort the run to avoid hitting the miscreant. I finally succeed in getting the job done. It takes 6.3 seconds to get up to 50 kph, and while doing that it must have taken me a couple of seconds just to get the bike in motion, but once it gets going I find that it accelerates very quickly for such a small motorbike. But I'm not relishing doing the upcoming 0 to 80 kph acceleration run. I decide to wait until the return trip from Rayong back to Pattaya.
On the way up to Rayong I notice a depressed ripple in the pavement and decide to go around it. If I hadn't, who knows, it might have thrown my bike. The Honda Click only weighs around two hundred and fifty pounds so it's not anywhere in the same league with much larger bikes with their much larger tires and much more capable brakes. Moreover I'm leery of that large open area in front of me where I already am just too aware of the bike's lack of bracing that will tightly hold the front of the bike to its rear section. Much of the time I'm thinking This is really not all that bad. It's much better than I have expected. And then there's those moments when I feel a vagueness in the bike's steering. The rear and the front of the bike do not feel like they are tightly welded together like they are on my Yamaha Elegance. I decide to focus on that lack of road feel. It seems to come and go. At one moment I might be going 68 kilometers per hour and I can really feel it but when I reach 70 kph the feeling of numbness disappears. But I'm only too aware of the bike's lack of chassis rigidity. Along the way, the fastest I ever get the bike up to is around 85 kph. But on the return trip I'll get it up to close to 100 with more on tap. During the same run last month when Peter and I were driving the two PCX's I got the 150 c.c. rental up to 110 while he got it up to 115 and I've oftentimes gotten my Yamaha Elegance up to over 100. The Click certainly accelerates fast enough. It just doesn't inspire the same feelings of competence that the other bikes do. Out of the entire lot, the 150 PCX is the best for the highway.
I see the sign for Saeng Chan Beach and turn right to get off the highway. I'm driven. Should I head right back to Pattaya or should I do a little exploring on my own? I've called my friend, PlOne, and told him that if all went well I should be back in Pattaya a little after twelve noon and I really need him to help me do the rest of the motorbike tests. For one thing I want to know his overall feelings towards the handling and all around performance of the Honda Click. PlOne is one of the few friends I can depend upon absolutely so barring an emergency I must not be late. When I'm driving my car I have my GPS which is a godsend here in Thailand. But this time I'm confident and cocky. I won't get lost. So I decide to go for it. I need to get good pictures and I need to get some good video and driving down the highway with all those trucks all around me is just too risky. I need to be sharp on the highway with both hands on the bikes bars at all times, my senses keenly alert as I try to divine what all the idiot drivers all around me are going to do next, even before they know it in their own minds. After making the right turn, I go a few kilometers until I'm pretty sure I'm near the beach. Finally a T Road presents itself where I can go either right or left. I choose to go left, and for the first kilometer or so, I note the landmarks around me so I will know where to turn on the way back.
I've been here before. The first time with Peter, but Peter knew where he was going being used to taking bike trips to Rayong a number of times. The second time I had visited Saeng Chan Beach was when I had followed David's hopeless directions looking for his condo building. But I had wound up being nearly ten miles off and when I called David he told me, "Oh, I'm sorry. I told you to get off route 36 too soon." That had been a bad day. It was the same day I had broken my clavicle while testing out the Honda CBR. Not that there was anything wrong with Saeng Chan Beach. The traffic's practically non-existent here. And up the road I remember all those boats that had been anchored in a picturesque cove. So it was here that I'd be getting most of my video footage.
There were no mishaps getting back to route 36. I thought I recognized the road I had come down to the Beach road on, but I drove past it anyway, just to make sure. Then I doubled back, took the road and drove up to route 36 a few minutes later. I was home free, or so I thought, with a clear straight line path back to Pattaya I had been on nearly a dozen times before. I should be able to make my 12 o'clock luncheon no sweat.
By this time the traffic had started to get a lot worse. That's on account of all the small minds waking up late, I had always reasoned. What I had not counted on was all the road construction I'd be encountering. It wasn't that the traffic would be piled up all the time thus calling my progress nearly to a halt. It wasn't at all like that. It was just that the road turned out to be so god-awful choppy and cut up. Getting up a road like that on two wheels would be a tough proposition even if I had been driving a motorbike that had been designed for highway cruising. But on a lightweight 125 c.c. bike such as the Honda Click, it turned out to be pretty painful with the little Honda behaving like a vibrator a good part of the way. And I still had to do the 0 to 80 kph acceleration run.
After getting up the highway a few kilometers so that I was far from the city traffic of the immediate Rayong area, I eased into the bike lane on the left side of the highway where I kept eyeballing for an opening in the traffic that was barreling right by me. On a bike fast moving cars and trucks going by me resemble a horde of angry bees. I am constantly aware of the fact that in countries such as the U.S. there are at least ten times as many fatalities per every million miles driven for motorbike riders as there are for those in cars. And in Thailand there is at least four times the death rate for motorists as there are in the U.S. and in Europe. And I hate to even think of what the odds are around Pattaya or Rayong where so many motorists have a homicidal mindset.
So here I am parked well of the main road in a narrow lane that's normally reserved for motorcyclists. Well, call it the shoulder of the road. So just imagine being parked on the shoulder of a U.S. highway and along comes a big semi trailer with his horn blaring angrily at you, sounding, "Get the fuck out of my way!"
And that's the way it is here--"Get the fuck out of my way." Drivers here will pass you just to get one car length ahead of you, and they are going nowhere because the traffic's too packed ahead of them anyway. Two miles down the road they still are just a single car length ahead of you. Perhaps you have even passed them on your motorbike, and here they have risked an accident instead of just relaxing and going with the flow. And if someone does hit you while you are driving your motorbike, perhaps even killing you, I can guarantee you that it's going to be a hit and run. It always is.
The cars and trucks are swarming all around me as I continue to sit on the Honda waiting for an opening. I'm still sitting there five minutes later when I finally spot an opening. So with my cell phone in my left hand which I'm using for a stop watch I twist the bike's throttle and start off as I push a button on my cell phone that will start the stop watch. At any moment a fast moving car or truck can come right up behind me, but unlike the U.S. it's not likely to be stopping. I swear by the gods that they have a caste system here in this country that goes like this. If you have a car you get a lot of respect, but if you only are driving a motorcycle you get a lot less respect. After all, if you really could afford a car in the first place, why would you be driving a motorbike? And if you are walking, that means you are really dirt poor and therefore not worth the smallest amount of consideration. To prove my point, just ask yourselves, "Who has the right away around here? The car or the pedestrian?" It's the car. And as for there hardly any sidewalks to be found around here, well, pedestrians simply are not worth the time and the trouble.
I remember one time I was out taking a walk for exercise. I was on Second Road and I wanted to walk across a narrow barely trafficked street. I was actually walking on one of the few places where there was actually a sidewalk. I looked in both directions, saw the coast was clear, and proceeded across the intersection. But to my right and slightly behind me two Thai young women on a motorbike decided to make a left turn into the intersection. Immediately behind them was a second motorbike with two other Thai women on it. The first bike struck me, not hard. And I wasn't hurt, but the point was that it did hit me, and somehow I wound up getting one of my arms tangled up in one of the mirrors. While untangling my arm, I caught a look that was half anger and half disgust from the driver of the first motorbike. Then I looked at the expressions on the faces of the two women on the second motorbike. It was clear that the girls regarded me as the one at fault. Not one of them was sorry and no apology was given. I was wrong because I was a foreigner and because I was walking and because I didn't have eyes in the back of my head to see that the motorbike was about to make a left turn into my path from behind me and to my right.
With my attention riveted on my potential killers zooming up behind me I didn't notice that the two trucks ahead of me were doing slower than 80 kph. This meant that I'd soon be overtaking the two trucks before I'd hit 80 and then I'd have to go around them on a bike that only had 125 cc's. I had to abort my acceleration run and get back onto the road's shoulder. Eventually I got the job done. But I nearly lost my cell phone while trying to hold it in my left hand while driving across a rough stretch of pavement that nearly jarred the cell phone out of my hands. Zero to eighty kilometers per hour took just 10.39 seconds. And once again, it must have taken a couple of seconds just to get my momentum going. So do your math. If 0-50 takes 6.3 seconds and 0-80 takes just four seconds longer, this means that I'm accelerating at the rate of 18.5 miles per hour in four seconds or nearly five miles an hour per second. For a little 125 c.c. motorcycle that's pretty fast.
Just a few miles down the highway I notice a semi trailer in the left lane being passed by a car in the right lane. The driver of the truck must be asleep at the wheel. He's going too slowly to have any business in the passing lane. For another, as I've seen so many times before, he clearly is not looking so he nearly collides with the car that is passing him. It's a very spectacular near miss because the semi trailer actually starts to jackknife while trying to avoid a collision at the last moment. Less than sixty seconds later another car tries to pass the semi trailer who like I said is driving too slowly to have any business in the passing lane. But the motorist's time is too valuable for him to give the truck his horn and to wait a few moments for the truck to get into the right lane. Instead he drives out onto the right hand shoulder of the road and passes the truck with his car half way onto the shoulder as the left half of his car narrowly avoids hitting the truck in the right lane. This is not a once in awhile kind of thing. It's happened to me three times on this same stretch of the road while I was driving my Honda Civic in the right hand lane. Here I'd be driving 65 to 70 miles an hour when suddenly out of nowhere a car would zoom up behind me and then start passing me on the shoulder of the road. This is why I cannot recommend that anyone drive large bikes here in Thailand just so that he can enjoy driving out on the freeway. Once again, I want to spell this word out in large capital letters "HOMICIDAL DRIVERS." The lack of intelligence, the arrogance, the lack of compassion for one's fellow man, and the complete impatience and lack of self control hardly exists in the U.S. the way that it does here.
Once in awhile there's a yellow painted line down the pavement and whenever I cross it the bike's front end starts to waver. With my larger than stock Michelin Pilot Sporty tires my Yamaha Elegance isn't going to have this problem and I do think it would be handling this road a lot better than the Honda Click does. But in all fairness, the last tires I had on my Elegance did too much wavering while crossing such minor road imperfections. Driving a Honda PCX along or across such a yellow stripe would be very painless in comparison. The PCX on the highway is the best of the whole lot and the 150 PCX is noticeably better than its 125 PCX and some of that I suspect is due to reasons other than its having 25 more cc's and therefore more power. I think Honda's done a little suspension refinement on the new 150 model or perhaps it's got better tires on it now.
So when I keep saying on the you tube video that driving a small motorbike on the highway between Pattaya and Rayong is extremely dangerous, I don't want to be taken lightly or thought of as a wimp. Just a few weeks ago, an American friend was nearly killed by a bus while driving to the Siracha Tiger zoo with his son on the back of his motorcycle. His son luckily escaped serious injury, but my friend wound up hospitalized in a coma and it's been reported that he will wind up with serious brain damage. And I keep thinking of some of my other friends, such as a German on the 7th floor of my building who had a motorcycle taxi driver suddenly veer two lanes over before knocking my friend's motorcycle down. The result--a serious shoulder injury and another hit and run to put into the record books. And during that same week, an Australian friend of mine who was hospitalized for a week after being hit by a pickup truck for another hit and run. That's the way it is around here. They hit and then they run. As for my friend on his way to Siracha, the way I heard it, it was all his fault. He was almost asleep on his motorcycle when he had the accident and of course it could never be the bus driver's fault. But I know otherwise after personally experiencing too many near misses with tour buses.
In spite of the traffic and the road construction I still manage to meet PlONe for lunch by 12:15. All in all the little bike has managed the trip very well. I think that had I been driving my car it would have taken me just ten minutes longer to get back from Saeng Chan Beach. Now comes the really interesting part, I keep telling myself. |
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It's not enough for me to just give my own impressions of the Honda Click's handling, acceleration and all around drivability. Ideally I need to get the feedback from at least one other person so that's where PlONe comes in.
Ideally I should have three judges, including myself to rate the Honda Click and to compare it to other bikes. But Plone's able to leave his busy schedule behind and meet me for the next exercises. After having lunch, we gather rolls of paper towels from my condo which we place at strategic intervals in my condo parking lot. Yeah, I know, I know. They aren't the same kind of cones the writers over at Road and Track Car and Driver and other well regarded car magazines use when they test cars over a slalom course. But they work and that's the bottom line. My condo parking lot's also on the small side for this kind of thing. But even if I had a lot of those brightly painted cones and a much larger space I still don't want to be getting all my friends hurt. So the whole point of this exercise is to get anyone who's running a bike around the paper towels thinking about one thing and one thing only, and that's handling handling, handling. So after PlOne manages to put three motorcycles through the surrogate cones, I have him drive the Honda Click over to Dolphin Circle where Naklua Road meets Pattaya Nua and back, and then I ask him for his impressions of how the Honda Click stacks up against his Yamaha Nouvo 125 SX and my Nouvo Elegance.
The first words coming out of his mouth after returning from his test spin were, "This thing's a real rocket. It's got so much torque down low. It nearly knocked me off its seat at first. It really is a lot faster than my bike."
But PlOne was not as impressed with the handling of the Honda Click. He commented: "It's too quick while turning. It can get you into trouble." And then I had him drive my Nouvo Elegance while I drove his Nouvo SX as I escorted him part of the way back to his condo. When I asked him about how my 135 Nouvo Elegance handled, PlOne replied: "It's rock solid."
Having put a lot of seat time on the Honda Click already, I got a real feel for how PlOne's Nouvo SX stacked up against it in acceleration at speeds up to 20 mph. The Click was definitely much faster than the SX. My Elegance, on the other hand with its 135 c.c. engine, accelerated about as well at low speeds. And as for handling, well once again, my Michelin tires are one size larger than the stock tires on either the Nouvo Elegance or the Nouvo SX that recently replaced it in the Yamaha lineup. So it's no contest. Thus equipped, the Elegance is about as good as it gets in a small motorbike. It is perfectly composed and it can steer very quickly when you want it to. I can drive it dead ahead and make it switch instantly from side to side as I flick my body back and forth. Swish, swish, left, right, left, now straighten it up. The response is perfect and the bike neither under steers or over steers.
Of course if PlOne got the same tires on his SX it would handle every bit as good as mine. But it's not that far off as I reported earlier on in my comparison test between my Elegance and a Yamaha SX I rented. Even so, the PCX 150 is even more solid driving down the highway at speeds over 80 kph.
At the gas pump I got 59.8 kilometers to the liter with the Honda Click. That's 140 miles to the gallon which his fantastic. I think even a Honda Wave would not beat that. So much for automatics being thirsty. And as for Honda Waves being faster, well let me put it this way. I can't remember ever being passed on the highway by a Honda Wave when I'm driving a good automatic such as a Yamaha Nouvo or a Honda PCX. Your typical Wave comes stock with these wimpy skinny 60 mm wide tires. One in awhile I'll find a Honda Wave in a parking lot sporting much larger tires than stock thanks to an astute owner who knows the score. The bottom line is that one cannot possibly drive such a bike very fast on their puny stock tires. The larger 135 c.c. Yamaha Spark is the same way for it too comes from the dealer with Mickey Mouse tires. I think the reason for this is that most buyers of such manuals are Thais who value the utmost in fuel economy above everything else and their own personal safety least of all.
Another myth is that Honda's attention to quality control is a lot better than Yamaha's. I find that to be very doubtful. As for the Honda Click I rented PlOne and I had two issues. First....it was difficult to latch the seat which did not want to close and lock up solidly. I had to keep shoving it down to get it to latch correctly. I also had a problem getting the seat to unlock when pushing the "seat button." The other issue is that the turn signal switch is not well designed. Compared to a Yamaha's, the turn switch was tricky to manipulate. I've never had either problem with any Yamaha I've ever driven.
So what's the verdict on the Honda Click 125i? I think PlOne would agree with me when I suggest that it represents a good choice for the type of person who's only going to be driving around town whose driving is overwhelmingly city. The typical driver in such circumstances won't really notice much difference between a Honda Click and a Yamaha Nouvo. The large open area in front of the driver permits maximum utility and space for the driver's legs and grocery bags hanging that he can hang in front of him. But for the type of person who really appreciates fine handling it is no match for a Yamaha Elegance or Nouvo SX, especially at higher speeds out on the highway. One must keep in mind that there's a price to be paid to get all that maximum utility. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Honda Click 125i employs a single rear shock absorber. But so does the Honda Scoopy and Yamaha's Fino, Mio, and Filano along with a number of other bikes. I think this simply shows the work of the bean counters who probably reason, "We can lower our production costs by eliminating the second shock absorber and most drivers won't even notice." Well that might be true, but when I've got a 300 pound friend on the back of my bike with my Thai girlfriend sitting behind him, that's a lot of weight to be toting around. I only do it once in a great while and it's only going to be for a short distance, say to a restaurant or bar that's in the neighborhood. But I don't think I want to even be thinking of trying it on those little bikes that have only a single rear shock. Even inexpensive Honda Waves have twin rear shocks and it's because the Thais who buy them might just wind up mounting a portable restaurant or shop side car style on his Wave and then they might be putting a lot of kilometers karting all that extra weight around as they travel from place to place selling shish kabobs, fish, shoes, women's clothing etc. I really don't think all those single rear shock equipped bikes are going to hold up to such hard use. There are two things I want to mention that I really like about the Click 125i. First---it has a 5.5 liter fuel tank. I think Yamaha made a big mistake when it switched over to a 4.3 liter gas tank from the 4.8 liter tank it had been using on the 135 Elegance. With its nearly 60 kilometer per liter stellar fuel economy that 5.5 liter tank translates into a lot of real estate one can cover before even thinking of running out of fuel, which is pretty reassuring while wandering far from home. The other feature that's really nice is the start idling stop system that's also being used in Honda's larger 150 PCX. This setup automatically turns off the engine when the driver is idling at a red light thus saving fuel. Then when the light turns green and the driver wants to get underway all he has to do is to twist the throttle a tad and the engine starts up instantly.
So that's it. The choice is yours and for many people the Honda Click is definitely worth consideration. As for myself, I'd prefer a Yamaha Nouvo for its excellent handling prowess especially in the city. Or Honda's 150 c.c. PCX with its slower steering but overall excellent performance, especially at higher speeds out on the highway. |
Specifications
| Honda Click | Yamaha Nouvo SX | Yamaha Nouvo Elegance | |
| displacement c.c. | 125 | 125 | 135 |
| price | 48500 | 57000 baht | N.A. |
| Horsepower | 11.7@8500 rprm | 10.4 | 11.2 |
| Torque | 14/7500 Nm/RPM | 10.47 Nm / 6000 rev / min | 10.6 Nm /6,500rpm |
| Weight (Kg) | 246 lbs | 246 lbs | 244 lbs |
| Tire Size Front | +80/90/14 | +70/90/16 | 80/90/16* |
| Tire Size rear | +90/90/14 | +80/90/16 | 90/100/16* |
| 0-50 kph | 6.3 seconds | Not tested yet | Not tested yet |
| 0-80 kph | 10.39 seconds | Not tested yet | Not tested yet |
| Handling | OK | Good | excellent |
| storage beneath seat | good | good | good |
| Fuel Economy | 59.8 kpl | 53 kpl | 53 kpl |
| fuel tank capacity | 5.5 liters | 4.3 liters | 4.8 liters |
| Cooling | water cooled | water cooled | Water cooled |
| Fuel System | fuel injected | fuel injected | carburetor |
Note on Horsepower. It is next to impossible to find reliable figures for
Honda. I've only found one source for the 11.7 I'm suggesting for the Honda Click 125i. However, this bike's quick acceleration suggests
this might be a good number.
*Note---the tires are aftermarket Michelin Pilot Sporties one size larger than stock. I put these on my own Elegance, which has recently been replaced by the Nouvo SX
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