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It's a full-sized bike, although the engine is a bit on the small side for its size. I've been considering putting in a larger engine if it's possible. The bike in the background is my father's '04 Harley Road King, and it's not all that much smaller.
As for highway performance, well... it depends on the highway. Out here in Texas, a lot of the highways are still 55mph. It does fine on those, but tops out around 67-ish, so the interstate's out of the question. I tried once, but I'm not doing that again. Also, we get a lot of strong wind out here, and at highway speeds on a bike that only weighs 337lbs (153kg), it gets pushed around a lot. Scary.
Although the bike is branded a "Baja", it was really manufactured by Guangzhou Panyu Huanan Motors, and is listed as the "FY250" on their painfully-difficult-to-navigate-and-half-404'd-and-unfinished English-language website. A little research turns up that they're ISO certified (What that means for quality, I'm not sure. Anyone know?), and have been around since the 60's, so I feel a little bit more confident about owning one of their bikes.
I've been really pleased with the build quality, although I feel like going up to Pep Boys every once in a while and slapping them around a bit. The service they performed before I could take it home apparently didn't include tightening anything, checking any fluids, checking the functionality of the the clutch or lights, or checking the drive chain. I do not believe that there is a bolt on that bike that wasn't loose when I got home, the brake light didn't work, it didn't have enough oil in it, and the clutch lever wasn't aligned correctly.
Nothing was broken on the bike. The worst thing was the brake light, which came on with the hand brake but not the foot brake. It was just a disconnected cable (probably came loose during shipping and Pep Boys didn't think to check it), though. Nothing was broken, and once I got everything tightened down correctly and the oil changed, it ran beautifully.
Even though I've only put about 400 miles on it so far, it's been very reliable and I would definitely recommend this bike to anyone looking for a cheap bike to go around town on, if you can find one. Just make sure you carefully inspect everything on it because Pep Boys sure doesn't know what the hell they're doing.
On a side note, it's getting pretty good gas mileage (between 60-80mpg (25-35 kpL), depending on weather and where and how I ride it), and my insurance is very cheap at about $25 per month through State Farm.
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