Author: illnoise

News Bits, Jan 8, 2007

We’re still catching up on news reports from our holiday break. This should bring us up to date:

  • Authorities have banned the Segway from public streets and sidewalks in the Netherlands, citing their lack of a mechanical brake as a safety hazard. It’s easy to make jokes, and we should, because Segways are ridiculously stupid, but this does pose an interesting question about how governments will react to the many alternate-fuel vehicles coming to market, especially those that don’t conform to standard vehicle categories. Few companies can afford the luxury of developing and marketing a product that may likely be banned on streets, just one more reason why huge companies already armed with lobbyists and lawyers will probably continue to dominate the market. In other words, good luck getting licence plates for your new Vectrix electric motorscooter (what’s the displacement, sonny?), and welcome to 2007.
  • New Honda Metropolitan rider tells the Arizona Daily Star how much she loves her scooter.
  • “At one point I was going to lease a BMW to try to meet women,” Jeff Schultz tells the Louisville Courier-Journal. Luckily, he came to his senses and bought a Kymco People 250. We assert that scooters’ environmental impact is notable, yet generally overstated, so we found both comments pretty funny.
  • Kymco has expanded its relationship with ARI to improve customer relations by streamlining warranty claims and product registration.
  • Following up the results of an earlier report, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries confirms that scooter sales are kicking ass in Australia. While several Australian companies, notably Bolwell, have been importing rebadged scooters from Asian makers, Vmoto has gone a step farther and bought their Chinese supplier, Freedmoto, outright. (That’s ONE way to ensure decent quality control from a Chinese company.)
  • Motorcyclenews.com reports on a 112-horsepower Italian racing scooter built by Team Cristofolini Racing. The custom-made aluminium 4-cylinder 350cc engine is mounted in what used to be a Malaguti F12 frame.

Kristal leads Bajaj scooter revival

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Becky McCabe on a Bajaj Kristal, with Kiran K. Dani, Bajaj Engine Assembly Manager, Bajaj Akurdi Plant, Pune, India (Photo: Dave McCabe)

With scooter sales exceeding expectations in India, Bajaj–known for decades as a a world-leading scooter company–doesn’t list a single scooter on their website. For a year, Bajaj has been selling of remaining stock of their unpopular Wave and bragging of their dominance of the second- and third-world motorcycle market. Stuck without a product in a growing (or at least very stable) market, Bajaj seems reluctant to admit their judgement error, even as they scramble to release new scooters. The first new effort, the Kristal DTS-i, debuts in February. At 95cc, it’s targeted towards teenagers and specifically women, which seems sort of old-fashioned even by Indian and Bajaj standards. Dave McCabe of VCOA and American Scooterist just returned from India, and some Bajaj plant tours, and reports:

The Krystal is kind of a disappointment. It’s smaller than the [Indian Honda] Activa. It has all sorts of funky angularity built into the design (crystal-like?) The scooter has lots of gadgets added to it, an underseat storage light, light-sensitive sensor for turning on the headlight at night. Turn the ignition key one way and it pops open a gas fill. The underseat compartment can hold a full-face.

In India, at 16 you can ride an “ungeared” scooter under 100cc. You need to be 18 to ride a geared scooter. The wimpy engine capacity is targetted for this market.

The engineers who gave me the tour assured me that the Krystal’s engine was an entirely new design from the Wave. It keeps the Wave’s dual spark system and the “exhaust tech” (I know, B.S. names.) I understand the point of the dual spark but I had to have an engineer explain the point of the exhaust system. It’s basically a little box off the main line of the exhaust pipe. At low rpms, the little box (ahead of the cat converter) help reduces back pressure on the engine. It’s more” low tech” than “exhaust tech” but apparently it works.

Bajaj was pretty coy about why they stopped production of the Wave. It had something to do with the starter motors, but I also think that it had other design flaws. It was evident that they were being super-careful with the rollout of the Krystal. Dealers were getting limited numbers to test for bugs and there were many stages of quality control in the engine production. All of the engine cases were pressure tested. If the cases didn’t hold pressure they were pulled from the line. The leak was found using the old “soapy water” method, then repaired. All engines were also bench tested before being put in bodies. The bench test was interesting, they had a system set up so they could check that the engine would run on both spark plugs or either plug. At the end of the assembly line, all of the scooters were dyno tested as well. It’s pretty clear they want rock solid scooters going out before they ramp up into full production.

More Kristal news from the Hindu Business Line, the Business Standard, and Techwhack.

Lambretta > No. 50 Bus

Birmingham, UK, transport chief Coun Martin Mullaney made a name for himself by demanding that other public officials use the bus system, but he admitted to the local paper that he usually rides his vintage Lambretta because public transportation is so backed-up. “Birmingham is seen as anti-bus, and some of the things we have done have added to that perception,” says Mullaney. Um, yeah. (Thanks for the story, e*rock.)

More on LML “rebirth”

lml-star.jpgIndian news has been closely following the news of LML’s return. Indian station CNBC-TV18 interviewed LML Vice President RK Srivastava, who made it clear Piaggio is not involved in the recovery. DNA India had a bit more detail, but not much, a few days after the original announcement. The loudest chatter came from several Indian investment experts, who warned against investment in LML, reminding us that they were, lest we forget, losing money for years before the lockout and a speedy return to profit is unlikely.

MBI Awards Nominations open

MBI70.gifYou might have noticed the “Motorcycle Bloggers International” logo on my site. MBI is mainly a forum for motorsports bloggers, but the public face of MBI is the annual “MBI Awards,” awarded to people, organizations, websites, and manufacturers related to motorcycling (and scootering, of course.) This year, the nominations have been opened to the public so if you want to give someone props, or rip someone’s head off, please do. You can also sign up for an automatic reminder when it’s time for voting, I’ll post reminders here, too.

CDOT contacts Chicago scooterists

This week, I was approached by a Chicago Department of Transportation consultant looking for input for a report about scootering in Chicago. If you’re interested in participating, and you’re a scooterist and a Chicagoan, please contact me at illnoise(at)2strokebuzz(dot)com and I’ll email you the relevant information. This is a fantastic opportunity to have our voices heard, so please drop me a line.

VespaUSA, the internets, and missed opportunities

Ex-Vespa-blogger Crystal Waters points out at Girlbike that even the marketing community has picked up on Piaggio’s failure to support the official Vespa blogs. ClickZ’s headline, (“Two Years After Launching Brand Blogs, Vespa Forgets Them,”) is misleading, they were forgotten about ten minutes after CooperKatz patted themselves on the back for inventing the idea. Still, even though both blogs were frozen in time with a depressing lead post about Vespa’s lack of enthusiasm, the VespaUSA site linked to them until yesterday (presumably the links were removed as a result of the ClickZ story).

Another punchline comes from a VespaUSA visitor who requested a catalog online and waited three months for it to arrive. As of today (January 3, 2007), the VespaUSA site launches a pre-Christmas promotion popup page. The front page features four “news” stories, two dating from June 2006 and at least one (possibly two, it’s unclear) featuring an expired promotion. Neither PiaggioUSA nor VespaUSA’s site mention a 2007 lineup, or the most-anticipated scooter of 2007, the MP3 (which amazingly remains without a name for the American market). One has to imagine that the majority of hits to a motorcycle manufacturer website in January are going to be people looking for new model info.

Canadian Scooter Corp. announced their 2007 Vespa/Piaggio lineup in mid-December (featuring the MP3, but no Vespa S!), but their site is also woefully out of date, featuring “news” from May 2006 and nothing about the new models.

If Piaggio as a corporation doesn’t have the reaction time or resources to keep their own sites up to date, (simply a fact of life for some bureaucratic corporations), the two Vespa blogs were a perfect way to spread information –on their terms–in a more timely manner. That’s why it’s even more depressing to see that they couldn’t muster the little effort required to communicate with their own (volunteer!) bloggers. With so many scooter bloggers, “official” and otherwise, doing their work for them, you’d think PiaggioUSA would be able to capitalize on their own hype, rather than abandoning every initiative they start. Once again, I ask, what the hell do Vespa’s marketing people (in-house and at CooperKatz) do all day? There’s very little evidence of marketing at the national level, in the past year they mustered nothing but an occasional PR-fluff newspaper story, the “Open Letter to Mayors,” the Vespetition (their master opus, maybe a week’s worth of work) and a handful of ads in national scooter magazines. Meanwhile, they’re awarding dealerships to anyone who asks, so they can say their “sales” are up. Perhaps their “marketing” is all at the dealer level?

Thanky New Year

My week off is over, and I’ve got a typical backlog of news stories to post tonight, but in the meantime I just wanted to thank everyone for reading 2strokebuzz, it consistently blows me away how many people choose to waste their time here. 3Q06 traffic has been incredible and when I see more hits, I post more, so everyone wins.

I’ve got a few changes in mind for the site, but I’d also appreciate any other comments or ideas, if something about the site annoys you or doesn’t work, or if you’d like to see more features, now would be a good time to let me know (via email or in the comments) and I’ll see what I can do.

For the last couple months, I’ve been toying with the idea of accepting advertising. After coming up with a good plan that would probably be fairly lucrative, I reverted to my juvenile and retarded notion that accepting advertising would be a compromise of whatever little ‘integrity’ I have, so for now, anyway, I’m ditching the idea. Instead, I’ve decided to put more effort into merchandise, hopefully that will bring in a few bucks and you get something to show for your support. Our store is empty at the moment, but look for some new t-shirts soon, and more merchandise down the road. Again, I’d love suggestions!

As always, we love submissions from readers, and if you happen to work for a scooter manufacturer or dealer, we’d love to hear from you, whether it’s official news or product releases, or you have some insider news you’d like to share anonymously.

Anyway, there’s a lot to look forward to this year, thanks so much for everything, it’s a great feeling to have so many friends around the world, Have a safe and happy 2007 and please keep in touch!

Bryan

LML back in February

It’s Christmas in… um… late December: citing “large export orders for two-wheelers” among other factors, LML announced production of scooters and autorickshaws will restart in 2 months, hopefully ending nearly a year of labor strife, legal wrangling, government meddling, threats of self-immolation, and general whining. Those export-only two-wheelers are presumably the LML Star, Genuine Stella, and New Zealand-model Belladona, making LML the only worldwide manufacturer of Vespa-style steel-bodied manual-transmission scooters. It’s unclear, but possible the autorickshaws are being built under contract for Bajaj. Thanks, M5 for keeping an eye on the BBS for me.

100,000th Vespa of 2006

Vespa-100000.jpg

At 12:30pm on Tuesday, December 19, a red Vespa GTS 250, the 100,000th Vespa of 2006, rolled off the Piaggio assembly line, a production milestone not reached since 1990. Vespa production topped 50,000 in 2004, and reached 87,000 in 2005, so Vespa production has doubled in two years. Piaggio chairman/CEO Roberto Colaninno came down to the line for the celebration, and announced the company will donate one Euro for each Vespa sold in 2006 and 2007 to the Italian multiple sclerosis association AISM. Photo: Piaggio