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?
Kymco certainly stands to reason considering that they already build some of the single cylinder engines for BMW, particularly if memory serves the 450 engine. The relationship is already there.
Matt
Don’t know where the engines are coming from, but when the Concept was first announced, the plan was to build them at the BMW Motorrad factory in Germany. I’ll look for the quote again…
Yeah, Kymco did the F650GS engines until 2007, I think, though the bikes were assembled in Germany. The G650GS (which is a renamed F650GS single-cylinder since the new F650GS’s are actually detuned 798cc twins) engine is built in China.
My 2003 F650 has a Kymco-built rotax single-cylinder engine, and they’ve got a great reputation. I haven’t heard any complaints regarding the Chinese-built single-cylinders either, though if BMW is smart and monitoring quality-control like they should be, that’s not really a surprise.
That BMW scooter looks retarded, though, but so do lots of maxi-scoots, and other BMW motorcycles, so I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder.