Month: August 2006

Around Australia

Australian scooterist Julio Languiller is a quarter of the way into his 15-day, 10,000-mile trip around Australia for at-risk and homeless Australian youth. Languilller holds world endurance records on Honda 50, 125, and 150cc scooters and is a veteran of many long-distance charity rides. The Cannonball Run starts in less than a month, their ride is less than a quarter the distance in two-thirds the time, but they’re mostly riding vintage scooters, not 600cc Honda Silverwings, so we’ll cut them some slack.

Tukker update

Jo and Ants, tuk-tuking across the eastern hemisphere, are still rolling and still blogging. They’re off to the Ukraine today after an unintended 4-day stop in Volgograd, Russia. They seem to be under the impression it’ll be easier once they get through the Ukraine, but we’ll see!

Smoky two-strokes clobbered by SUV in emissions test

We overlooked this story from Portland, OR’s Williamette Week, assuming it was just another rehash of the “Vespanomics” story. But the Scooter Scoop read it and brought it back to our attention. Suspicious of all the pro-scooter hype out there, they did their own tests, comparing a “Piaggio-made” (ha) Stella, a 1968 Vespa, and a Subaru Tribeca. The results weren’t pretty for rotary-valve 2-strokes, but it should also be noted that the Tribeca is hardly the worst offender in the SUV kingdom. A 4-stroke Vespa LX or a Bajaj Chetak vs. a Ford Expedition or Hummer would have been an entirely different story, we demand a rematch!

Another new Genuine: The Rattler

While we guessed right yesterday about the new Genuine Blur being based on the PGO G-Max, The Scooter Scoop reports that Genuine has another scooter on the way! The new Rattler will be available in 50cc and 110cc 2-stroke versions, and appears to be a Genuine-ified PGO PMS (once again, a big improvement, name-wise). If you like the style of the Genuine Black Cat, based on the PMX, but were turned off by the graphics, the rattler would be the bike for you. Going by the specs, though, we remain much more excited about the Blur, and look forward to seeing it in Minneapolis this weekend. The Rattler is the fourth of PGO’s eight current scooter models (ignoring the trike) Genuine will bring to the U.S.