Ural gets on the scrambler trail

December 2015

Ural Motorcycle outfit | 749cc | Russian

Considering the fact that this bike, like many Ural outfits, is equipped with a driven sidecar wheel, it's perfectly natural that Ural should be way out in the dirt fooling around and getting mucky. In fact, it's a wonder that it took the firm so long to produce a dedicated Scrambler-badged model to add to its rapidly increasing range.

This is the newly released limited edition combo being built for 2015/2016. Actually, pretty much all Urals are now being manufactured for limited edition/niche sales (check out the firm's Dark Force edition on Sump November 2015).

The company reckons that this 749cc bike could have been called the Fire Salamander. Apparently, that's the most common species of European salamander lizard, and this semi-exotic reptile is painted yellow and grey/black by God; hence the connection with the (attractive?) livery on the combination immediately above and below.

However, Ural tells us that the fire salamander is "soft and vulnerable" whereas this motorcycle outfit is hard as nails, etc. Sounds like a thin sales pitch to us. But we'll accept it if you will. And we love this next line from the firm:

"Other manufacturers of great looking machines have a Scrambler, so why not Ural?"

Yeah. Why not, huh? When the bandwagon's on a roll, you'd be stupid not to clamber aboard, and this bandwagon appears to have a huge crowd chasing it.

Features include Heidenau K37 knobblies, an "upswept 2 in 2 (sic) black silencer system with a discrete throaty sound", minimalist luggage racks, "tough looking bumpers" (which presumably really are tough rather than just tough looking), excess weight removed (i.e. no spare wheel this time), and "really chique LED foglights."

Spelling and syntactic errors aside, we like this outfit. It's the kind of bike you want to wash with mud, drop off a small cliff and take to bed.