Italjet once again mocks reality by displaying the Dragster (with a new sticker!) at EICMA. The Italjet.com and ItaljetUSA.com websites remain frozen in time in 2005, their entire corporate reputation resting on the unlikely return of an overrated ten-plus-year-old scooter. Can you imagine a company so hopeless that China won’t even touch it?
Category: Manufacturers
Baotian’s Vespa knockoff
Chinese manufacturer Baotian unveiled a new scooter pretty clearly influenced by modern Vespa design.
Betcha:
- That’s plastic bodywork with a tube frame under it all.
- “Lambretta” (the “Italian” one), Jin Jian, ZNen, FlyScooter, Lance, Milan, and countless others will all be selling this scooter soon.
- Piaggio, unable to stop China from copying their bikes, will instead launch individual legal campaigns against dozens of importers in dozens of countries, costing the company millions, a cost they will pass on to consumers by marking up color-matched half-helmets another $100 each.
Is “Piaggio GT850” the Gilera GP850?
Remember the rumors that Piaggio would display a new 850cc scooter at EICMA? Remember we asked why Piaggio and Aprilia called the V-Twin 839.3 engine an “850” while Gilera called it an “800?” Well, this appears to be the scooter in question, and it’s not Piaggio-branded after all, instead, it’s a nicely revamped Gilera GP800, and they upgraded the displacement to 850cc without changing the engine one bit. At least they’re consistent now.