The 650R has 70ish Hp, and the 500R has 60ish Hp. It is a big step. My GS500 has 50ish Hp and I find it powerful enough to lug me around and have some fun, and if you look at my picture I’m sure you can tell I don’t weigh 160lbs. I can keep up to my neighbors 1994 Mustang GT when accellerating from a stop, so 50 Hp is enough to begin with. I don’t know about you, but my first car wasn’t that quick, but I thought it was…lol
The 500R/GS500 will do 0-60 in about 5 to 6 seconds (500R-4.5/GS500-6.1)…the 650R/Gladius will do it in under 4 seconds (650R-3.8/Gladius-3.…yup, that much more powerful…and they aren’t really FAST bikes…hyperbikes do it in under 3 seconds…the 250R does it in 7.7 seconds…
Just to compare…
1995 BMW 325i – 7.7 seconds
2003 Nissan Sentra SE-R SpecV – 7.3 seconds
2006 Honda Civic Si – 7.2 seconds
1999 Mustang GT – 5.5 seconds
2005 Mustang GT – 5.1 seconds
2006 Subaru Impreza WRX STi – 4.5 seconds
2005 Corvette C6 – 4.3 seconds
2001 Porsche 911 Turbo – 3.9 seconds
As you can see, a bike will put you into some pretty serious performance company…even with a “beginner bike”.
You really don’t need as big of a bike as you might think to have a lot of fun. You can easily stay ahead of traffic with any street bike. The cars that I listed are thought of as quite fast for their class of car, but most people just look at the cc’s of the bike and make assumptions. Even the 250R has lots of performance.
Choose carefully…