Once upon a time, small-bore singles occupied a significant slot in the motorcycle market. Simple, approachable and easy to ride, they were an affordable way to decide if you really wanted to be a motorcyclist after all.

Honda may no longer build the CB125, but SYM has continued cranking them out, first in 125cc guise and now as a 150 (actually 149.4cc, but who’s counting?) it markets here as the Wolf Classic.

If you’re only mildly familiar with the original CB125S you’ll be forgiven for looking at the Wolf and thinking, “Hey, cool old Honda,” because that’s what most people think. While we were photographing our test bike, a 50-something passerby was mildly incredulous when we told him our SYM wasn’t a restored classic but a brand new bike.

That was a common reaction to the Wolf Classic while we had it, and we’d wager it’s precisely what SYM is banking on in the U.S. market, where making small bikes hip seems to be a good — and necessary — marketing strategy.

And the Wolf is definitely hip-looking. The white paint on our test bike was lustrous, nicely set off by the contrasting red-painted frame and the seeming acres of chrome splashed on the Wolf. Granted, some of that chrome isn’t of the heavy metal kind. The mirrors, for example, are chrome plastic, as are the instrument housings and turn signals.

Plastic or not, those bits look good, and combined with the Wolf’s other vintage cues — like a nicely stitched two-up saddle, a low-slung exhaust and a pair of trés-cool looking clip-on handle bars mounted above the upper triple clamp — they let the little Wolf shine in a café sort of way. It’s sort of old school standard meets new school urban 20-something.... Read the complete review of Symwolf Classic 150