Category: Honda

AGI on U.S. Boom and Piaggio/Vespa hybrids

I’ve long stopped linking to most stories about the scooter “boom,” gas savings, and supply shortage, every small-town paper in America has covered it to death already, but now we’re making news overseas. Italian news agency AGI posted their story today, with some details about Piaggio’s sales (up over 100% in May!), their plans for U.S. hybrid models, and some glaring errors about U.S. motorcycling laws.

Another (positive) Honda-inspired rant

Bob sent this great Honda ad from 1967. The ad’s a perfect illustration of everything Honda got right back then, and explains how they came to dominate the U.S. motorcycle industry at that time. There are a lot of ideas here for aspiring foreign scooter and motorcycle importers (in no particular order):
Continue reading “Another (positive) Honda-inspired rant”

“Have it your way” with Honda?

Honda’s site welcomes you to “Have it Your Way” and customize your scooter to your exact specification. Fun, right? Except the SilverWing only comes in one color and offers no options or accessories, and the Ruckus is only available in black or silver this year, with no further options. The Metropolitan offers many accessories, but its rainbow of colors and patterns in recent years has been stripped back to red only. There’s something to be said for keeping a product line simple (Brooke’s working on a story about that), but a huge worldwide player like Honda, with such a wide variety of models overseas, should be offering more than three scooters in the U.S., or at least the one that’s topping all the best-seller charts in Europe.

Indian makers explore natural gas models

RedOrbit reports that LML, Bajaj, Honda, and Kinetic are all working on natural-gas powered concept bikes, possibly including dual-fuel options. Just thought we’d throw that in there with all the 210cc nuclear-powered rotary-engine automatic time-travelling Stella rumors floating around.

Can your bike’s “face” improve visibility?

Neat story on how some motorcycles are designed to resemble a human face:

[Honda’s tests] found that motorcycles that resemble a human face – especially an angry one evoked with diagonal headlights – are “significantly” more visible to other drivers. Measurements taken with functional magnetic resonance imaging confirm that a more lifelike front-end design “elicits a response similar to that when a human face is seen,”

So, in conclusion, The Blur rules, and Andretti’s “Happy Cyclops” just isn’t going to cut it. (Thanks for the great link, Chandler!)

News chunks 10/8/07

  • Like many economy-minded Americans, a rural-Illinois journalist buys a $2000 Honda Metropolitan to save (by my calculations) $50 a year on gas.
  • The Moped Army gets a story in their hometown paper, with a shout-out to the Jedi Knights SC.
  • As the entire Bajaj family continues to feud, merge, and demerge, Bajaj Auto is still closing their historic Akurdi plant. Or maybe not. But probably. Whatever happens, it will take eons to sort it out with the unions. Of course, motorcycle sales are down and scooter sales are up, even Suzuki Motors India, one of the smaller players, is hoping to sell 125,000 scooters this year (and a 500cc Hayabusa, which in India might as well be two million crore cubic lakh-o-meters). So as soon as the dust settles and the plant closes at the peak of the scooter boom, look for our long-predicted announcement of the retro “new” Chetak, and the reopening of Akurdi, just as the scooter market tanks again.
  • Did you know: They have scooters in Arkansas now. (For the uninitiated, Arkansas is a southern American unincorporated rural province where newspaper editors use “apostrophe-s” to pluralize word’s.) It is, however, always great to see a club doing charity work. In other Arkansas scooter news, 20 University of Arkansas football players are riding scooters, which seems to be a trend among college football players lately, though I can’t find any more info right now to back that up.
  • Speaking of charity, a bunch of pub regulars in Birmingham, England are raffling a Lambretta painted in Aston Villa colors to raise money for a local childrens’ home. Meanwhile, the childrens’ home is selling candy to raise money for football lessons for Gareth Barry. (That was a little soccer joke there.)
  • Scooters India, Ltd., the most recent manufacturers of the metal-bodied 4-speed 2-stroke Lambretta GP, is investing 186 million rupees ($US 8.79) to upgrade facilities. Don’t get excited, they’ve produced only three-wheelers since 1997.
  • This thing has been garnering schloads of press in the last week, even though it’s basically an enclosed mobility scooter that would fall over if it got hit by a tennis ball.
  • Scooter parking is getting harder in Taiwan, just like everywhere else.
  • Only the Cincinnati Enquirer would publish a photo of a scooter thief in retro prisonwear with a smashed up face, then offer to sell you the photo.