One of the most interesting Dakar efforts in recent years was the Kove team. Their 2022 run on a made-in-China 450 didn’t threaten the top-10, but the entire team made it to the end day. In the weeks following the rally, a street-legal Kove 450 rally-replica was confirmed for the US market. It’s also headed for Canada, and that’s where we see the machine now being tested by the “hard enduro hosers” of Traction eRag.

Call them what you want (and they’ve been called plenty of names—see our interview here), but the guys at eRag are not shills. If you read their magazine before it went out of publication (they’re solely on YouTube now), then you know Dallas and Co. are straight shooters. If something is crap, they’ll say so. And if you watch that video to the end, you’ll note that they found some issues with these bikes.

However, they were overall happy with the machines, it seems—so happy that the eRag tours might have these available someday soon? Stay tuned on that one.

There’s a second review here from Chuck Harder, who works closely with Traction eRag. This comment on that second video seems to sum up what both Chuck and Dallas have to say:

Expect more videos about this bike coming from the eRag crew, but Chuck Harder’s review above probably sums up most of what you’ll hear. He thinks the suspension is fantastic, and while it doesn’t have as much power as he expected, he believes it splits the difference between a dirt bike and an adventure bike nicely.

Meanwhile, with a new bike headed for the 2024 Dakar, and a new top rider to pilot the machine, we expect lots of interesting news on these bikes for months to come. They’ve already exceeded many riders’ expectations; if they can keep that up, they might change a lot of perceptions about the Chinese moto industry as a whole.