Even though the brand has yet to establish a solid presence in the U.S. market, chances are you've already heard of the Chinese manufacturer QJ Motor. Apart from its recent initiatives in the world of racing, the rapidly growing Chinese company is also the owner of several brands you may be familiar with, chief of which would be Italian brand Benelli.
Over the course of the past few years, we've seen tons of QJ Motor concepts turn into reality. In Europe alone, the brand has a wide selection of naked, sport, and adventure bikes, all with displacements ranging from 300cc all the way to 800cc. This time around, the brand has revealed designs for a sporty cruiser bike, one that has clearly borrowed one too many styling cues from the Harley-Davidson Sportster. Indeed, the bike is the spitting image of Harley's sportiest Sportster, complete with the low-slung stance, horizontal headlight, fat tires, and twin exhaust pipes.
With that on the table, it really isn't all that surprising, as Qianjiang and Harley-Davidson have an ongoing partnership where the former will develop and build small-displacement machines for the MoCo. We've seen this with the Harley X350 and X500 which were unveiled earlier in 2023. As for the new cruiser in question, chances are it'll be called the Flash 600 V4, adopting the naming convention of other cruiser models in the QJ Motor stable. Interestingly, however, it'll be powered by a V4 engine, as opposed to the V-twin or parallel-twin motors we'd more commonly come to expect from these laid back machines.
The engine in question will likely be a 600cc V4 motor, something we know QJ Motor has been developing for some time now. Expect horsepower figures to be somewhere between 60 to 80 ponies. It'll have a 90-degree configuration similar to Ducati V4 engines, and will be equipped with four valves per cylinder and a dual-overhead camshaft setup.
As is the case with nearly all of QJ Motor's bikes, the Flash 600 V4 will most likely first see introduction in the Chinese market before the brand even thinks of exporting it to the global market. What I find more interesting is the 600cc V4 engine that they'll be using for the Flash. Surely a performance-oriented engine of this nature would be more at home on a sporty platform, perhaps a naked bike or a sportbike. Should this come into existence, it'll be the first modern V4-powered middleweight machine in the market.
