Watch The Evolution Of German Badness

No, I will not be recapitulating Godwin’s Law. But instead I will offer forth this pictorial display of complete bad-ass-a-licious-ness that is the process of turning a raw smallframe project into a sweet custom ‘racer’.

For Scooter Center’s 20th anniversary, GP One Tuning has participated in the build of a celebratory machine. You may know this Austrian tuning house for their CNC engine cases. Look them up on Facebook and they have plenty of eye candy in their galleries (as well as being where I picked up the main link).

I would criticize the use of the larger than 10″ wheels. That’s normally a deal-breaker for me. But overall this is shaping up to be a scoot that’s jam packed with goodies. Check back on the GP One or SCK sites for updates. They already have progress from that first raw material page.

They Forge The Chains They Wear In Life

Forgive me, Charles Dickens. But finding a witty title is a deadly game of one-upsmanship here in the 2StrokeBuzz boiler room.

Motoblog.it shared a video they came across showing some industrious Italians making their Honda SH150 a bit more adherent to the road. That is, at least the rear wheel.

Much of the country has experience a strange winter this season. But I’m sure someone, somewhere, could have used these tidily assembled chains to be a hardcore commuter.

Stop & Reflect: Braking Options From TSR

As mentioned here before, The Scooter Republic out of the UK and SE Asia has developed a new disc brake option for a few old Vespa models. Sam from TSR, a 2SB sponsor, sent along some pictures of the disc brake mounted on a Sprint-style fork. Compared to the previous posting on that prototype it looks like it’s gotten quite the polishing job. Bling.

The smallframe, old-style, hub version has also gotten the anti-dive design worked in as well and is currently available via their Ebay store. But as yet I’ve not seen that model mounted. If someone wants to trade me a set of old v90 wheels, hubs and fork and 592.52 USD in exchange for a PK fork with Paoli shock complete with wheels drop me a line and I’ll try to arrange a test!

Not So Innocenti…

Our first Britney Spears-inspired headline heralds the (maybe? sorta?) return of famed Lambretta maker Innocenti in a story that hasn’t garnered any media coverage, but once we blow it out of proportion here, it may send a few Austrian IP attorneys into a tizzy.
Jeb (of FIDO fame) spotted an interesting badge on the electric car shown at 4:28 in this video collage of electric vehicle photos from EICMA:
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Modern PK Automatic at EICMA

This is just a short post to beat Bryan and the new cub report, Matt, to the punch.

It appears that rumors are true (but are secrets really lies?). LML has shoehorned an automatic into a PK body. They are showing it off at the big bike show EICMA, in Italy. I noticed the photo posted in Scooter Mercato‘s facebook feed. Thanks, Dave.

Discuss. (Likely more analysis to follow.)

More Four Stroke Vespa PX Rumblings

SIP Scooter Shop reports that they have a reliable source confirming that Vespa will be showing off their new 4-stroke powered PX series scooter at the upcoming EICMA show in Milan this Fall. The Genuine Scooter Company LML-made Stella 4-Stroke has recently made it to dealers around the country. But will the new PX come back to America? Would current Vespa dealers want it? One thing that many will be interested in is the design of the engine. Will it be unlike the LML and fit into the classic Vespa frame?

File it all under RUMOR until we see it rolling around Rome.

Larry Crowne Electric Scooter, Photo.

As you may have noticed around scooter blogs, it’s Larry Crowne mania. You may recall the 2SB post about the Lambretta outfitted by Route 66 Scooters with an electronic conversion kit from Soundspeed Scooters. The person behind that kit is also behind the Fido electric scooter concept also reported on earlier. Now we have photographic evidence of the machine in action. The photo shows the clearly un-two stroke drive train. For some continuity, they even throw in a kick start lever! While I haven’t seen the film yet, I’ll likely check it out while it’s in first run. In the mean time, can anyone chime in with a description of how this scooter plays a role in the film? Is it really passed off as a stink wheel with a sound effect? Or is it embraced for the Lithium Ion powered machine that it is?

(photo from Zimbio)

1947 Mohs Scooter

Referring to our post about the scooter show at L.A.’s Petersen Automotive Museum, Pete in Wisconsin sent us a related story about Bruce Baldwin Mohs’ 1947 13-foot-long motorscooter, which is featured at the Petersen show.

Mohs is an 87-year old Madison inventor/eccentric, he built the four-passenger scooter after hours at his school’s metal shop as a teenager. It’s not as elegant as the Vespa, introduced a year earlier, but the machine got some attention at the time, and Mohs rode it as far as Kentucky.

POC Stella 4T pipe

Speaking of the 4-stroke Stella, POC is developing a pipe. I’m not a fan of the loud, but I know i’m in the minority there.

Timoni’s Travels through Time

Former Piaggio Americas CEO Paolo Timoni has written an editorial speculating on the future for Dealernews. If we ever seemed less-than-confident in Timoni’s guidance, this editorial piece should make our case nicely. Timoni’s hopes for the future in many ways are parallel those of 2strokebuzz, but we’d never in a million years imply that our dreams are realistic. Granted, he admits it’s all a bit of a fantasy, but one can’t help wondering if Piaggio’s U.S. growth plan was hitched on the same fantasy.
Let’s take a quick look at his predictions:
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BMW “Concept C” to U.S.

Hell for Leather reports they were told firsthand that the widely-hyped BMW Concept C scooter will enter production with a planned 2012 U.S. market debut. (2SB suspected this might be the case when we, apropos of nothing, started getting BMW PR emails last week.)

Guido Ebert followed up on Facebook:

…some media outlets have been wondering whether it’ll come with ABS and LED headlamps. Answer: Yes. The company likely to build the scoot already offers ABS and LED lights on its own scooters.

That sure sounds like Kymco to us. Kymco’s a fine company that builds great scooters, but will Americans pay BMW prices for Taiwanese scooters with a roundel?

Geely, DEPLOY!

Another entry in the Car/Scooter crossover market, via Bradford: Gizmodo reports on Geely’s twist on the idea. You may remember Geely as the manufacturer of ubiquitous bonfire-fodder Yamaha Vino clones a few years back, or as the first Chinese manufacturer to exhibit at the Detroit Auto Show. Laugh all you want, we’ll all be driving Gleagles and Englons in ten years.

Piaggio adds a wheel to the MP3

With Mini, Smart, and now Volkswagen all (tentatively) targeting the scooter market, isn’t it time for Piaggio to build a car? Indeed it is. Piaggio’s Indian-market NT3 is based on the Ape platform and Piaggio expects it to be available in India in late 2012, and eventually in Europe and Asia. Props to Piaggio for not calling it “Il Nuovo Vespa 400” even though pretty much everyone else is.

Thanks for the link, Scooterism! You all follow Eric on Twitter, right?

Pinasco Slider Clutch Innovation

This morning, the email inbox of many vintage Vespa aficionados contained a message from the Italian aftermarket scooter company Pinasco. The email describes something akin to reinventing the wheel but a bit more intriguing. The new offering from Andrea Pinasco is a replacement for the brass bushing found in the clutch of Largeframe Vespas (#30 in this diagram). The ersatzenbushing isn’t just another sleeve but rather a caged roller bearing. The company claims it will reduce problems in gear changes and fit worn clutches. One wonders if it will fit a non-worn clutch. Anyone have one of those? I’d be interested to see what gear changes are like with this bearing in conjunction with a a multi-spring clutch. It’s uncertain if this fits all models. If anyone knows if the same bushing is used in all of these clutches chime in.

Brooklyn Motorized’s Electric “Cafe Racer”

I know I’m supposed to support stuff like this, and it’s probably as well-intentioned as the FIDO, which I like (more on that from Brooke soon), and café racers are all the rage (OMG POCPhil’s podcast is amazing, more on that later, too) but this Brooklyn Motorized electric café racer thingy just looks like a Portlandia punchline. It’s like vegetarian “bacon,” I don’t have anything against alternative proteins at all, but why disguise them as bacon? it doesn’t look like bacon, it doesn’t taste like bacon, nobody’s going to be fooled, and it just makes you look like you’re desperate for validation from the mainstream carnivores. Make an attractive alternative to meat and sell it on its own strengths, and I’m there, shoving it in my bulgur hole.

I’m probably being too harsh, the performance (60mph) is compelling, and there are some neat engineering decisions going on (the briefcase powerpacks are nice). And other cafe-racer fans like Scooterism like it, so maybe I’m wrong. If the price was right it could be a winner, but I’m betting on premium hipster pricing.

I’m really interested to hear what you guys think about this, and I can’t wait until it comes up on Cleveland Moto.

Update: Brooklyn Motorized’s Wes Cox sent a worthy response:

I was searching “Brooklyn Motorized” to see what people thought, since today’s NYT wheels post was the first bit of press that we’ve released. I stumbled onto your post.

I completely get what you’re saying, it has been a weird trip designing this thing. Your write-up sounded like our team playing devil’s advocate with each other- You say vegan bacon, but for two years now I’ve been thinking of it as: “sugar free ice cream.” My first machine was a P200E, and last year, after a year on the electric motorcycle project, I had to buy a ’74 RD350. I take deep sniffs of the two stroke smoke, as do most of the team here- most all they guys are either into 2 stroke mopeds, and some of the guys are into bigger 4 strokes, SV’s and stuff like that. Well, we are entering an amazing era: The performance and range of electric motorcycles is going to increase at a pace many people are not expecting.

We thought our bike should draw on old street bike looks, but it definitely should not be too retro or too cafe- this was the first prototype, built a year ago.

I think once we get to production we’ll find the sweet spot. And we’ll all have to decide what the hell these machines should look like. We just dont want ours to look like an electronic transportation appliance.

It comes down to the ride too- the torque on these things is plain fun- the future is full of fun small electric bikes, and 2 stroke smoke will be a precious and rare smell.

Oh, and the price for our machine will be $5999, $5399 after the tax rebate. We priced it to land in Vespa price range, and it has been tough to keep the price down like that. It looks like we’ll be able to deliver at that price point.

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