Category: 2sb News

Roadracingworld.com reports that former scooter racing ace Scott Smallwood crashed at Virginia International Raceway and fractured several vertebrae.  Apparently he’s doing ok (as he was healthy enough to write to RRW) and wrote that he was, “quite lucky to be alive and not paralyzed”.  Smallwood was racing his 125 machine in a U.S. Grand Prix Racers Union event on June 22nd when he was apparently on a hot lap before crashing and ending up into a tire wall.  Get well soon, Scott.

Modernmechanix has a nice set of photos from a 1939 Popular Mechanics piece on scooters.  It mentions a scooter company in Chicago, parking on sidewalks, over 100 mpg and scooters surviving a fad stage.  Some think the ‘scooter boom’ is coming to a close.  But I’d suggest just widening ones view.  Was there a boom?  Is the current buying frenzy just a crest in the sine wave that would look like a steady line from the right perspective?  Thanks to The New Cafe Racer Society for the link.

That’s right, folks, Donald Rumsfeld has apparently bought himself an LX150. How much longer until the rest of the Bush Cabinet find themselves on the back of an Italian scooter, i just don’t know. Maybe soon we’ll be seeing them show up to PVSC; Condi Rice on a naked ride aboard a VBB, or Ashcroft tearing up the gymkhana course with a tallboy of Old Style in his hand.

thanks, Rollie

Check out Cisco’s “Visual Networking,” ad, the third ad on this page, where a phone tells a Vespa rider how to change his spark plug. It pans away before the phone tells him:

• The engine’s on the other side of the bike, dummy, why do you have the left cowl off?
• Good luck with that short-reach plug in your P-Series.
• That yellow scooter up the road is prettier.
• It’s not your sparkplug anyway, your CDI is fried.

(Thanks, Phil and Ben)

As reported on 2SB earlier, cloning the Kymco Agility seems to be the latest craze.  Peirspeed, the importers of the Sachs MadAss and TGB products, have their own Agility clone like the Italjet IT.50.  Their Model is called the RM50.  In the early days of mainland China clones the Kymco Cobra was the scooter of choice to be copied and sold by fly-by-night importers.  It is slightly disturbing to see the same tactics practiced in regard to the Agility this time around by distributors claiming to be more reputable and in it for the long haul.  Does this reflect the changing marketplace where clones are now OK and intellectual property is fairly meaningless?  Or is it an indicator that these companies are really no different than the shipping container importers/dumpers of the past?

There is an abundance of talk about gasoline prices hitting 4.00 per gallon this summer.  Scooter businesses don’t seem to mind a bit.  The higher the price of a gallon of gas, the more people seem to walk through scooter shop doors.  The LA Times reports general motorcycle businesses are starting to catch on to that idea as well.  The article discusses how the stated fuel efficiency is not as accurate for two-wheelers as it is for automobiles.  The fact that fuel use on a scooter varies greatly due to rider weight and how aggressive they are with the throttle is widely accepted and should be made clear by retailers.  Another thought-provoking report by Business Week expresses how it seems that supply and demand may not have a whole lot to do with the rising prices at the pump.  This week congress is making an attempt to get to the bottom of it all.  Good luck with that, Mr./Mdm. Senator.  Most scooter owners don’t drive a scooter as their sole mode of transportation so gas prices going up will affect them significantly for their automobiles, not to mention higher costs for everything else that is ever shipped or involves gasoline in it’s production (read: food).  But, overall, do you readers feel immune to or insulated from the rising cost of fuel due to your scooter use or even enriched by your scooter related business during this time of three to four dollar per gallon gasoline?  Sound off!