The Kymco Cobra was once the favored clone style second only to the Yamaha Vino. While doing some ‘research’ on what the new offering from Italjet America (a.k.a. LS Motorsports) will look like and I found an Italian site, Motorino.it, showing some photos of the ‘new’ it.50 scooter.
It looks sharp in yellow but it struck a chord of familiarity when I looked at the photos for a few seconds. I compared it to the Kymco Agility and it appears to be nearly identical. Differences appear to include the fender and headlight, but are minor compared to the similarities. The it.50 seat is like the Agility 125 rather than the jump-seat style on the 50cc of the Kymco model. The it.50 does not appear on the Italjet site but has been tipped to be a possible new model shown at the dealer show in Indianapolis in a few weeks.
The Agility is made in mainland China and the price is reflective of that. I wonder how many new Agility clones we’ll see in the coming few years. It’s not a bad choice for something to clone, regardless of what one feels about the state of intellectual property in developing economies.
I was thinking man, that headlight looks familiar,” (that’s a photo from the chinese pavillion last year) but the body’s totally different.
That is the JMStar Zeus. It is a Kymco Cobra body clone with that same headlight found on the it.50! They also make a Cobra clone with the standard Kymco headlight design, so maybe they just use that light set up to add some spice! Given the already low Agility price point and extensive dealer network I’d have to think the Italjet will have to even undercut that price to sell something other than the real deal.
I wondered if it was possible that Kymco was working with JMstar, but there doesn’t seem to be any official connection. Here’s a great history/overview of Kymco if anyone’s interested. They apparently now have multiple facilities in mainland China, but as far as I can tell, the Agility is the only U.S.-market Kymco that’s manufactured in China.