Motorcycle Product News reports that manufacturing costs are rising quickly in Asia, and consumers can expect to pay 15-20 more for scooters over the next year. Here’s the full story (pdf), it’s a must-read.
Thanks to Steve at PowerSportsFactory for the PDF.
“My advice is buy five containers of 125-250cc scooters or commuter
motorcycles now, and sell `em when gas hits $5 per gallon … you can’t miss.”
Pretty sad, but probably reflective of the industry. Damn it’s slimy.
Maybe, just maybe, they’ll look to the designs and lose some of that horrible extraneous flash looking crap bodywork. And maybe get rid of the underseat storage. The bucket has to be some considerable mass of plastic. And if it was not as bloated as all modern scooters are, maybe there would be less plastic needed to cover that bloat with abs skin.
I paged through their online version of the mag. Not too many chinese powersports company ads as some industry rags. But they do have an aricle by Joel Martin about dune buggies and how to be an importer and make money on them. I was just asking myself the other day, ‘You know what this industry, nay, this nation needs?’ DUNE BUGGIES!!!
500cc PGO dune buggies with Piaggio engines.
My advice is to go back in time to 2002, open a small scooter shop and build a relationship with some responsible distributors, jettison the ones that didn’t support their bikes well, and then order triple your 2007 order for 2008, well in advance. in that five-year period, you will get to know the bikes and the people, you’ll eventually find some good mechanics, and you’ll be prepared for summer 2008.
Oh, you can’t go back in time? then my advice is to shut the hell up, reactionary trend-jumper.
Poorly written article stating the obvious. Errors abound….$200/barrel oil by mid 2008…..that was not likely even given the lead time required for this article. 50cc Euro-branded Chinese scoots increasing by $1800…….impossible. All the economic indicators have been showing ever-increasing commodity costs for quite some time now.
Bottom line: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that the retail price of any form of automated transportation is likely to increase significantly in the future.