When I arrived in Victoria for the launch of the Rieju Aventura Rally 307 it was eight degrees, we’d had about 40mm of rain in the past 24 hours and it was absolutely bloody freezing. Perfect weather, then, to go and find out whether Rieju’s new Aventura Rally 307 is actually a decent off-road adventure bike or just another cheap road bike that has about as much performance as a Pontiac Aztec (look it up, it was built for adventure driving and came with an inflatable mattress!)
The Rally 307 is currently Rieju’s only adventure bike in Australia and it enters what is becoming a seriously competitive small-capacity ADV market. But as a dirt bike bloke, this smaller end of the adventure spectrum is probably right up my alley. I’m not trying to cross the Nullarbor in record time with the missus, three panniers and half the contents of my garage strapped to the back. I want something I can ride out of town, smash around the bush all weekend and ride home again.
So that’s pretty much how we tested it. We headed out of Melbourne and into north-east Victoria, throwing freeway, bitumen, fire roads, greasy singletrack, mud, water crossings and even some jumping at the little Rieju. If there was ever a day to expose an adventure bike pretending to be a dirt bike, this was it.
SIZE DOES MATTER
The first thing you notice is how small the Rally 307 feels. Dimensionally, it reminds me of something like Honda’s CRF300 Rally, perhaps even slightly smaller, and that immediately makes it less intimidating than most adventure bikes. It weighs a claimed 137kg dry, which is getting considerably closer to dirt bike territory than the 200kg-plus monsters at the other end of the ADV spectrum.
It’s still a tall bike, though. The seat height is 890mm and at around six-foot I fitted comfortably both sitting and standing. The 1420mm wheelbase is also relatively short, which helps explain why the Rieju feels so nimble when you get it into tighter terrain.
Up front, I also like that Rieju has gone with a high front guard rather than a low guard hanging over the tyre. After the amount of rain we’d had mud can build between a low guard and tyre until you’ve effectively created your own front brake, and that’s one problem the Rieju avoids.
RALLY BUSINESS
The whole front of the bike feels properly rally-inspired. You’ve got a tall tower and fairing, a big vertical seven-inch TFT display and a cockpit that makes the Rally 307 look far more expensive than it actually is. The TFT also offers MirrorLink connectivity, so you can connect your phone and use the big display for navigation rather than trying to follow a tiny phone screen hanging off the handlebars.
More importantly, the fairing actually works. We rode the bike out of Melbourne at freeway speeds and it did a surprisingly good job of keeping the wind off my face and upper body. At my height my head normally sticks well above smaller adventure-bike screens and gets knocked around by the wind, but the Rieju was pretty smooth in that regard.
The handlebar setup is good too. It runs a fat-bar-style bend without a crossbar, so it doesn’t feel overly rigid, and the overall bar position felt natural when standing. The standard grips are more road than dirt, though. They’re fairly hard and smooth, so if I was setting one up for plenty of serious off-road riding, a softer and grippier set would be on the shopping list.
THREE WAYS TO STOP
The brakes were another strong point. There’s a 300mm wave disc and twin-piston caliper up front, with a 240mm disc at the rear, and we had no complaints about either. There’s plenty of stopping power on the road but, more importantly for us, enough control and feel when things get slippery.
The ABS system is also much better thought-out than some of the cheaper systems we’ve encountered. You essentially have three options: road ABS, off-road ABS and completely off. Road mode intervenes fairly aggressively, as you’d expect, while the off-road setting gives you some assistance at the front but leaves the rear alone.
Switching between them is easy through the controls on the handlebars, although you need to be stopped to do it. Turn ABS completely off and you genuinely get no ABS, which is exactly what you want when you start attacking.
THE BIG SURPRISE
The suspension was probably the biggest surprise of the entire bike. Up front is Rieju’s own 43mm upside-down fork with a whopping 235mm of travel, adjustable for compression and rebound. Better still, the adjusters are accessible by hand at the top, so you don’t need to start digging through your toolkit every time you want to make a change. The rear shock (another Rieju part) also offers 235mm of travel and adjustment for preload, compression and rebound.
At about 100kg with all my riding gear on, I expected to find the limits reasonably quickly. We were jumping the thing, hitting erosion mounds and riding it considerably harder than most Rally 307 owners probably will, but the fork held up in the stroke incredibly well. I really struggled to bottom it, yet it still absorbed the smaller choppy junk without feeling harsh or deflecting.
I could actually ride the thing like a dirt bike. The rear shock did eventually bottom when I jumped it hard enough, but I had to have a proper crack to make it happen. For normal erosion mounds and trail riding, it handled everything we threw at it.
CHINESE RUBBER, NO DRAMAS
Then there were the tyres. The Rally 307 runs a 21-inch front and 18-inch rear, which is exactly what we want to see on an off-road adventure bike. The standard CST rubber didn’t exactly fill us with confidence when we first looked at it, particularly considering how wet and greasy our test loop was.
Turns out we didn’t need to worry. They were bloody impressive. We had very few moments where the bike threatened to low-side or unexpectedly disappear from underneath us. We were able to get up some long, greasy and properly muddy hills without too much drama, and the tyres found grip far better than expected. I’d still eventually fit more aggressive rubber if I was turning the Rally into a hardcore bush weapon, but I certainly wouldn’t be throwing these away before they were worn out.
DON’T BOX ME IN
Ergonomically, the Rally 307 is mostly very good, but we did find a couple of annoyances. The footpegs have removable rubber inserts, which is handy when you want more grip off-road, but with my size 11 boots the heel of my right boot would occasionally catch the exhaust. It prevented me from getting my foot as far back on the peg as I wanted when standing.
On the other side, my calf was catching the pillion peg when I was moving around on the bike. Thankfully, the pillion peg was simple enough to remove and that problem disappeared. Neither issue is a deal-breaker, but if you’re a bigger bloke wearing dirt bike boots, it’s something you’ll notice.
An aftermarket exhaust may eventually solve the right-side clearance issue by giving your heel more room as well. Given there’s already a performance kit available for this thing, there’s a fair chance plenty of owners will be heading down that path anyway. I’d be keen to hear if it makes a difference if anyone has one?
LET IT BREATHE
Power comes from a liquid-cooled 293cc single-cylinder four-stroke matched to a six-speed gearbox. In standard trim Rieju claims 33.5hp and, unsurprisingly, it’s not going to rip your arms out of their sockets. But that isn’t really the point of this motorcycle.
The engine is easy to use and the power delivery suits the chassis, although you can tell it has been built to meet ADR requirements. It doesn’t necessarily feel choked, but there’s a slightly doughy feeling right off the bottom and you find yourself wanting a bit more snap when you’re trying to ride it aggressively in the dirt.
Rieju offers an optional off-road kit for around $1400 that includes an exhaust and opens up the airbox. The claim is an additional five horsepower, taking it from around 33hp to roughly 38hp, while also improving response. We haven’t ridden it with the kit fitted yet, so we can’t tell you how big the difference actually is, but on paper it sounds like a pretty worthwhile upgrade.
NO BUZZ KILL
Where the little single really impressed was vibration. Small-capacity singles can often become bloody annoying once you’ve sat at highway speeds for any length of time, buzzing through the bars and pegs. The Rieju is remarkably smooth.
We saw around 120-130km/h with approximately 2000rpm still available before the redline and the bike didn’t feel like it was vibrating itself to pieces. That’s important because, while we’re approaching this from a dirt bike perspective, it still needs to get you comfortably from home to the trails.
The 21-litre fuel tank should also mean you can stay away from servos for a long time. Rieju estimates around 500km of range, although we didn’t conduct a controlled economy test on this ride, so we’ll reserve judgement on the actual figure until we spend more time with one. Either way, 21 litres on a 293cc single gives you some serious exploring potential.
NINE GRAND. SERIOUSLY?
And then we get to the number that makes the whole Rally 307 proposition pretty bloody compelling. Introductory pricing is $7990 before on-road costs, with the bike coming in at around $8990 ride away depending on where you register it. In 2026, getting a brand-new, road-registrable adventure motorcycle with this level of equipment for less than nine grand is impressive.
We were paying similar money for bikes like KLR650s a couple of decades ago. Inflation has done some fairly horrible things since then, yet here we are with a fuel-injected, liquid-cooled bike with fully adjustable long-travel suspension, a seven-inch TFT, switchable ABS and a 21-litre tank for roughly the same money.
For someone coming from dirt bikes who wants to dip a toe into adventure riding, or someone who mainly wants to disappear for weekends rather than ride two-up across Australia, the little Rieju makes a heap of sense. It’s light, agile and genuinely comfortable being ridden like a dirt bike and you don’t need to spend thousands before it starts looking and functioning like an adventure bike.
READY TO LOAD
Another thing we like is that the rear rack comes standard. That sounds minor until you buy an adventure bike and immediately discover you need to spend another chunk of money just to strap a gearbag onto it. With the Rally 307, you can throw your bag across the rear, strap it down and bugger off.
There’s also a two-year factory warranty, which matters when you’re looking at a brand that doesn’t have the same mainstream recognition in Australia as Honda, Yamaha or Kawasaki. Rieju has been building motorcycles in Spain for decades and its Australian importer already distributes bikes and supports a dealer network around the country.
ENGINE
Engine Type: Single-cylinder, liquid-cooled 4-stroke
Displacement: 293cc
Bore x Stroke: 78 x 61.2mm
Fuel System: Electronic fuel injection
Starter: Electric
Transmission: Six-speed
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 1420mm
Seat Height: 890mm
Dry Weight: 137kg
Fuel Capacity: 21L
SUSPENSION & BRAKES
Front Suspension: 43mm USD fork, adjustable compression and rebound, 235mm travel
Rear Suspension: Linkage adjustable preload, compression and rebound, 235mm travel
Front Brake: 300mm wave disc with twin-piston caliper
Rear Brake: 240mm wave disc
TYRES
Front Tyre: CST 80/100-21
Rear Tyre: CST 120/80-18
RRP & WARRANTY
RRP: $7990 + ORC / approximately $8990 Ride Away
Warranty: 2 years
Browser: rieju.com.au
