Scramblers are high fashion at the moment and Derbi has had the Mulhacen concept ready for a few years now. Finally the Spanish street scrambler has been launched and in 2006 style is everything. Mulhacen 659 is Derbi’s largest capacity motorcycle ever.
The streets of Barcelona is where Derbi chose to launch their new motorcycle and the location is perfect for a scrambler-inner city riding, mountains all around the city only broken up by the Mediterranean beaches. City, mountain and beach are three boxes ticked already on the Scrambler sheet-all ideal places to ride a scrambler. Mulhacen is the name of a mountain in the Iberian Peninsula.
I headed straight into the busy Catalonian capital and the single cylinder heart is the same engine that powers Yamaha MT-03, XT 660 and Aprilia Pegaso 650 Strada. Mulhacen 659 is a mixture between these concepts where the trail friendly tyres can handle some gravel, 43mm upside down fork with a solid chassis and aluminium swing-arm makes sure it handles on the mountain roads and powerful radial Brembo brakes makes sure you can stop on an inch when that bus turns into your path in the city. You can’t really have all this without some compromises and the suspension has got a soft base set up from the factory. When I first sat on the seat the sag was substantial and the effective riding height is very low. This compromised the lean angle and the foot pegs touched the tarmac quite easily. This is only excerpts of the article.
