Italy&rsquo;s historic trophy brands are currently enjoying a resurgence, with Benelli, Fantic and now Mondial the latest to exit the freezer section of that country&rsquo;s motorcycle history store, stacked high as it is with defunct brands from all its Latin two wheeled yesterdays. But these latter three all have one thing in common &mdash; the increasingly quality-driven Chinese industry is playing a significant role in their revival.Benelli has been 100 per cent Chinese-owned since 2006, and its ever more substantial list of strong-selling products are largely designed in Italy, but entirely manufactured in China. Conversely, Fantic Motor&rsquo;s fast-growing range of 250/500cc Caballero singles are built in Italy using engines shipped there from Zongshen in China, having been designed by Piaggio as part of their joint venture with China&rsquo;s third-largest manufacturer. And now Mondial has joined the comeback club, starting almost two years ago in December 2016 when manufacture began of the neo-retro HPS 125, a very different product than the svelte Honda SP-01 engined Piega 1000cc V-twin superbike which last carried the Mondial badge 15 years ago. This well-made good-looking single-cylinder street scrambler was also designed in Italy, but is built in China, again using Zongshen-made engines. In its first full year of production this was a showroom success, with 7000 examples built and sold around the world, according to Cesare Galli, CEO of Mondial&rsquo;s parent company Pelpi International based near Como, who&rsquo;s been responsible for recreating the born-again Mondial brand six decades on from its 1957 World title-winning 125/250GP double. Selling in Italy for &euro;3,790 (` 3.05 lakh) incl. 22 per cent sales tax (good value versus the &euro;4,489 asked for the Indian-made KTM 125 Duke and the &euro;4,940 Yamaha MT-125) shipments have also headed to Germany, France, Spain, the UK, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, as well as to outlets further afield in South Africa, Brazil, India and various Asian markets. Mondial has made a good start in becoming the global brand that Galli declares he intends to be.<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/1132/318171/5c0f8d99d39ec/1544522993264.jpg"" owidth=519 oheight=877" style="height:700px; width:414px" />This HPS 125 kickoff model has models built in China to further reduce costs. The HPS 125 was the first of these to hit the marketplace in both Street Scrambler and Supermoto guise, now followed by the 250cc version of each model, with other capacity platforms and models to follow. Eventually the firm plans bikes up to 650cc, using single and twin-cylinder engine platforms sourced in China, but with European levels of quality and performance, says Galli.The HPS 300&rsquo;s fresh, modern styling by Tartarini shared with its little sister has period design cues and close attention to detail that sets it apart from other neo-retro models emanating from the People&rsquo;s Republic. Its liquid-cooled fuel-injected four-valve 249cc single-cylinder wet sump motor, with chain-driven SOHC and Magneti Marelli EFI, was designed in Italy by Piaggio, but is entirely manufactured in China by Zongshen, the Italian scooter specialist&rsquo;s joint venture partner. Apart from its use in various Chinese-market-only Zongshen models, the engine also appears in other European products like the Fantic Caballero 250, as well as various Piaggio models. In Mondial guise it delivers 24.5bhp at 9000 rpm (yes, it&rsquo;s a revver), with peak torque of 2.24 kgm produced at 7000 rpm. This makes it suitable for A2 licence holders in the EU.<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/1132/318171/5c0f8d99d39ec/1544523014845.jpg"" owidth=830 oheight=637" style="height:537px; width:700px" />The HPS 300&rsquo;s sleek looks gives it a sense of substance, with its stacked twin exhausts running down the right side of the bike and the meaty-looking front end&rsquo;s non-adjustable Chinese-made 41-mm inverted fork. There&rsquo;s a sense of quality in manufacture about the bike, the result according to Cesare Galli of his careful selection of Chinese partners both for key components like suspension and brakes, and for assembly of the finished products, which are built for Mondial in Foshan, just inland from Hong Kong. The vaguely vintage-looking brown seat with prominent stitching looks quite upmarket and turned out to be surprisingly comfortable, although there&rsquo;s precious little room for the passenger that it can nominally carry &mdash; it&rsquo;ll be okay for short hops around town, but not much more.Climb aboard the HPS 300, and the impression of substance is maintained. This is a proper sized motorcycle, and for a 5&rsquo;10&rdquo; rider like myself there&rsquo;s a spacious riding position which allowed me to feel comfortable without being cramped. The 785-mm-high seat was tall enough for me not to feel cramped, yet allowed me to put both feet flat on the ground at stop lights. The quite wide taper-section handlebar delivers a relaxed but fairly upright stance that didn&rsquo;t get tiring, with lots of room to tuck my knees into the recesses of the nine-litre aluminium fuel tank. The radiator is hidden away high up behind the headlight, and those exhausts don&rsquo;t obtrude too much, thanks to a longer right footrest which gives room for your foot to operate the rear brake pedal. This initially seems a little awkward, but you soon get used to it, and it means you can tuck the toes of both feet on the well positioned footrests. I had no issues with heat radiating off the exhausts on to my right leg, so the heat shield works.Having already sampled the Mondial&rsquo;s Chinese-made CST (Cheng Shin) street enduro tyres on various CFMoto models, I was well aware that these give an acceptable level of grip that&rsquo;s consistent with Japanese or European products. Rolling on 18-inch front and 17-inch rear tyres, the HPS 300 tips the scales at just 135 kg dry (5 kg more than the HPS 125), and its handling is stable and well balanced. The front wheel with its skinny 100/90 tyre delivers light, precise steering that&rsquo;s slightly slower albeit less nervous than on rivals equipped with a 17-inch front. For a small, light bike that&rsquo;s not such a bad thing, especially as the Mondial&rsquo;s wide handlebar gives you all the leverage you need to flick the HPS 300 round tight hairpin turns or city street corners. The 130/80-17 rear tyre delivered all the grip required by the eager-revving motor.<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/1132/318171/5c0f8d99d39ec/1544523060910.jpg"" owidth=830 oheight=553" style="height:466px; width:700px" />Once again, just like the Zongshen-built HPS 125 motor, the new Mondial&rsquo;s bigger 249cc engine from the same source is a gem, without the need to use its sweet-shifting 6-speed gearbox as intensively as on the smaller bike to extract the pretty satisfying level of performance that it&rsquo;s capable of delivering. Clutch action is light, making this an ideal town bike thanks also to the upright riding position and high-ish 1800-rpm idle speed, which means pickup from a closed throttle is smooth and easy, and engine braking is always controllable thanks to the high idle speed. It has an eager yet manageable power delivery, so it picks up acceleration quite briskly by quarter-litre standards, and the twice-as-big engine is also more willing and much torquier than the 125&rsquo;s, so it doesn&rsquo;t need to be revved as hard to deliver satisfying performance or to keep up with traffic, plus the fuel mapping on the Magneti Marelli ECU is pretty refined. It&rsquo;ll pull wide open in top gear from just 2500 rpm, building revs smoothly and cleanly with no trace of transmission snatch all the way to the 10,200-rpm hard-action limiter, making this a very easy bike to ride in relaxed urban-friendly riding mode. At lower speeds the HPS 300 is an easy ride to cruise around town on, with the light-action clutch and smooth pickup from the well-mapped Marelli EFI making traffic duty anything but onerous.But if you decide you want to try a bit harder the HPS 300 is ready to oblige, with a strong pull from 4000 revs upwards, before a harder kick from 8000 rpm on. This flexibility means it&rsquo;s often easy to save gear changes if you&rsquo;re riding the Mondial as hard as it invites you to do, revving the willing motor between corners. It&rsquo;s fully on a par with the longer-stroke, slightly more powerful (30.4 bhp) and torquier (2.75 kgm) Thai-built 286cc Honda CB300R which is its most obvious rival, and arguably better performing thanks its lighter 135 kg dry weight vs. the Honda&rsquo;s 143 kg, plus the Chinese-made Italian bike has well-matched gear ratios and well-chosen overall gearing which together deliver quite invigorating performance &mdash; the Mondial is good for a claimed 150 kph on the speedo. There&rsquo;s no vibration until around 8000 rpm (when the footrests start to tingle a little, but not annoyingly) thanks to the single gear-driven counterbalancer, which is a welcome luxury &mdash; the inevitable power loss entailed in driving it isn&rsquo;t an issue. The HPS 300&rsquo;s engine is Euro 4 compliant, thanks to the well-disguised catalyst hidden away in the belly pan beneath and to the rear of the crankcase.<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/1132/318171/5c0f8d99d39ec/1544523106306.jpg"" owidth=521 oheight=353" style="height:474px; width:700px" />Despite its short 1370-mm wheelbase the Mondial has good stability on fast sweeping turns, even with those Chinese semi-knobbly tyres which do squirm around a little bit thanks to their chunky tread pattern, while that relatively high handlebar gives great leverage on twisting country roads. The non-adjustable Chinese-made front suspension irons out road shock more than adequately, giving good ride comfort for such a little bike even with just 90 mm of front wheel travel available from that 41-mm upside-down fork. But while the nostalgic-looking twin rear shocks deliver 120 mm of travel, their high-speed damping feels rather stiff and could arguably be a bit softer. Most owners won&rsquo;t ever take a passenger, so Mondial doesn&rsquo;t need to have the rear suspension as stiff as it is. That being the case, the single 280-mm front disc gripped by a radially-mounted four-piston caliper &mdash; all made in China &mdash; is more than sufficient to stop the Mondial properly in everyday use, although it and the 220-mm rear disc might be marginal with a passenger aboard. Unlike on the 125 which doesn&rsquo;t need it under EU rules, ABS is now fitted to the HPS 300 to give Euro 4 compliance.The Mondial&rsquo;s very practical barend mirrors deliver a good rearwards view of the traffic behind you &mdash; they&rsquo;re not as intrusive in real-world use as they might look to be at rest. The large round digital dash, offset to the right in front of the upper triple clamp, is well designed and informative. The tacho reading is shown around its circumference, the large-digit speedo in the centre, with a gear-selected readout above it. There&rsquo;s just a single trip shown beneath the speedo, with the time at the bottom, the fuel level on the left and water temp on the right.<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/1132/318171/5c0f8d99d39ec/1544523106352.jpg"" owidth=292 oheight=353" style="height:700px; width:579px" />Classy but not costly, the Mondial HPS 300 exudes a quality of manufacture that until recently would have frankly been unexpected from a Chinese-built albeit Italian-designed motorcycle. But, just like Japan half a century ago, Made in China no longer means cheap and nasty, but increasingly often well-priced and well-made. Willing and torquey, its Zongshen-built engine is the equal of larger capacity motors powering rival models in the circa-300cc sector, making this new addition to the Mondial range both bigger and better than its HPS 125 sister model. The promised HPS 500 version coming up next already has a set of cycle parts ready to receive the 449cc 43-bhp Zongshen SOHC motor with 4 kgm of torque to be found in the rival Fantic Caballero 500. With the help of its Chinese partners and Cesare Galli&rsquo;s three decades of experience of working with local suppliers there, Mondial is building an increasingly appealing model range as it proceeds down that comeback trail.

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