Month: January 2008

Las Vegas 2008

The new Las Vegas High Rollers Rally info has been posted for 2008, including pre-registration and merchandise from Modified. There’s a new twist this year: a series of competitions including racing, bowling, poker karaoke, and the usual scooter judging and gymkhana-type stuff. The club that racks up the most points will take home $1000, which will only offset 1/100th of their travel expenses, but I imagine the gloating will be unbearable. You could call it a “Scooter Olympics,” I suppose, but if you did the tightwad jags at the IOC would come after you like a greek drycleaner. It’s safe to say that the usual dancing, riding, drinking, gambling, and respiratory infections will remain intact alongside the competition.

Galewood Cookshack on Food Network tonight!

Tonight’s the debut of a new episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network featuring The Galewood Cookshack. If you read 2sb, you know all about our little pocket of Chicago called Galewood, and you know Grace Delcano, a scooterist, friend, and neighbor who honed her BBQ recipe at several years worth of Galewood scooter rallies. She’s gone pro and sells pulled pork sandwiches and nachos from her customized RV at street fairs, farmers markets, and auto/motorcycle events, and it’s great to see her getting the attention she deserves. Also keep an eye out for my better half, Vina, working it. If you’re in the neighborhood, come to the Kat Klub tonight for the viewing party!

Update: The show usually visits three places, this show they visited four, and the Cookshack was the last chunk of the show, so the segment wasn’t all that long, but Grace and the RV looked great, and the show certainly made me hungry. Vina didn’t get much airtime (I actually got more) but Su and Neil were prominently featured. Here are airtimes for reruns.

Scoop Scoop on ItaljetUSA

Almost exactly one year ago today, DiamoUSA announced they were bringing Italjet scooters to the U.S. (Our January 9, 2007 interview with Mathu Solo is here). A year has passed and no visible progress has been made, other than a few mysterious (and probably Asian-made) Torpedos (a model not even currently listed on Italjet’s site) showing up at small-time dealer in Minnesota a couple months ago. Today Steve Guzman of the Scooter Scoop announced he’s been hired by LS Motorsports (Diamo’s parent company) to handle marketing and Sales for ItaljetUSA. I’m happy for Steve, he’s a friend and an good guy, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. In November I was on the edge of writing a rant accusing Diamo and Italjet of knowingly deceiving dealers about Italjet’s comeback (or at least its timing) to sucker them into selling Diamo’s other models, but after seeing that Italjet actually had a booth at EICMA, (and the minor fact that I lacked any concrete evidence), I thought better of it, though I still have my doubts. Diamo’s somewhat-fragile reputation is on the line here, and hiring Steve was a wise move, hopefully he can be honest and realistic with dealers and the scootering public. Italjet in the late ’90s and early ’00s was an exciting, promising brand that never realized their full potential thanks to bad import/distribution deals and an abysmal parts supply. The Dragster, in particular, was probably the most beloved scooter of the modern era, and certainly the most distinctive, but it wasn’t given a chance in America. Hopefully this very quiet past year was spent developing manufacturing and distribution resources and preparing for a real launch, because on the surface, I’d be pretty furious if I signed onto Diamo under the promise of the Italjet line.

I still suspect Italjet’s Italian operation consists of a P.O. box in Bologna, a trademark attorney, and a hotline to a factory in Korea. If that’s true, there’s still plenty of potential there if quality control, engineering, marketing, and dealers are handled properly (Genuine does more or less the same thing, and they do it very well). If Italjet is staffed-up and building a giant factory in the outskirts of Bologna, let’s see some photos, let’s get the real scoop. If I see that same 2002 Dragster at Dealer Expo, Steve (who reported eight months ago that “Dragsters are on the boat!” and we’d see them in 6-8 weeks) is going to have a lot of explaining to do.

UPDATE: See comments for Steve’s response.

$2500 Tata Nano

The big news today, of course, is the launch of India’s Tata Motors’ $2500 Nano automobile. That’s right, India is building cars (there are more on the way from other makers, including a possible Renault/Bajaj collaboration) that cost half as much as a new Vespa. And Tata, who you’ve probably never heard of until this week, is a rapidly-growing superpower with steel, manufacturing, automotive, industrial, and hotel resources. The company is currently in the process of acquiring the pride of their former imperialist conqueror, Land Rover/Jaguar, from Ford Motor Co.

Ratan Tata, quoted in a press release, described the origins of the car:

I observed families riding on two-wheelers–the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It lead me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family.