Category: Manufacturers

Dealer Expo 2008: Genuine/Scooterworks

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Let’s get the DealerExpo ball rolling again (finally!) with a booth that didn’t offer many surprises, but gave us a first look in person at a few bikes we’d been hoping to see in person. The return of the Stella was of course big news to long-time scooter fans, but only one avocado model was on display at the booth shared by sister companies Genuine Scooter Co. and Scooterworks. Presumably, they sold the rest of their first small shipment since 2006.
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TGB/Sachs at DealerExpo2008 REVISED

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NOTE: I got a couple things wrong in the original story, hopefully I’ve covered all the mistakes. Apologies to Cobra Powersports for the mistakes and the delay in correcting them.

As Brooke pointed out last week, one of Dealer Expo’s biggest surprises was that TGB importer Cobra Powersports has added historic German marque Sachs to their lineup. Cobra is a solid operation with a good dealer network, and most dealers we talked to were pretty excited by the news.
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Piaggio will not privatize

Ducati Motor Holding has announced plans to buy out shareholders at a 23% premium and take Ducati private. According to Forbes, this news drove up Piaggio stocks, though Piaggio asserted today that they have no intention of following Ducati’s lead. 56.5% of Piaggio shares are held by IMMSI SpA, Piaggio chairman/CEO Roberto Colaninno’s holding company.

(See comments, I originally totally mangled this story and reported that Ducati was threatening to buy out Piaggio stockholders. I blame Forbes for writing confusing sentences.)

Adiva 250cc convertible launches in Japan

Remember the Adiva? The Adiva convertible scooter that Benelli’s old importer displayed at trade shows a few years ago has turned up in Japan, produced by a different company. While checking out the new “Andretti” Benellis (more on that soon), We asked U.S. importer Steve Rubakh about the Adiva, he said Benelli’s parent company Qianjiang sold the rights to the model and abandoned it because of safety problems. With the BMW C1 and the Diamo Velux also resigned to history, was the convertible scooter ahead of its time, or just a bad idea?

New Name For TGB US Importer With New Models

The Taiwanese scooter manufacturer TGB (Taiwan Golden Bee) has had a company called Cobra Sales as their importer for the last several years.  The TGB product has been fairly good, if on the budget side of quality ROC scooters.  The company is now appearing as Peirspeed and their website shows off thier expanded powersports line.  The line-up includes uninspiring formulaic choppers as headliners but has a few new surprises.  The Sachs MadAss has gotten a long-awaited displacement upgrade to 125cc.  This change makes a lot more sense than powering the heavy and overly tall-in-the-saddle motorcycle with the anaemic 50cc 4 stroke Honda Cub clone motor.  While the poor ergonomics have remained, as well as the 50cc option, new MadAss owners will now surely have a higher level of enjoyment with the extra power at the throttle of the nicely spartan and original machine.  Another pleasant surprise from Sachs, noted on the Peirspeed website, is a trellis-framed supermoto called the X-Road.  It’s a simple but good looking small displacement option that appears very nice as-is but really will scream for engine modifications or outright motor transplants (something two-stroke I’d like the think).  Hopefully the new incarnation of Cobra Sales will be able to maintain their adequate level of dealer and parts support with their rapidly expanding line.  I can not think of many examples of success following rapid expansion of a powersports line, but maybe they can be the first.  Personally I’d like to see new importers stick to keeping it simple until they’ve established a relatively impeccable reputation. 

Death of a Dream: R.I.P. Amarcord Concept

The critical words used when Italjet products are discussed have their origin in the frustration felt when their excellent concepts often fail in the execution of delivering the legendary products we hope for.  The Velocifero, Dragster and Formula models made it far when reaching for iconic status but fell short in the end due to poor product support and the ultimate demise of the company’s incarnation at the time.  Some exciting designs have yet to make it from prototype to production.  Examples include the Scooop, Rollercraft and Amarcord.  While the Scooop may have been outdone by the Piaggio MP3 in arriving first and the Rollercraft may yet arrive, the motorcycle-with-a-scooter-engine work of art known as the Amarcord seems to have died and it’s name lifted onto a Chinese scooter.  Reported by Cyberscooter.it from the EICMA in 2007, the scooter with the Amarcord name appeared as one of Italjet’s new offerings.  The scooter doesn’t look all that horrible it is slightly reminiscent of the Velocifero’s retro design with some tell-tale accents of mainland-China construction.  Also note the yellow Rollercraft model in the background.  What moves me to feel sad and mourn the loss of the of a great design is that the name transfer of the Amarcord label from an incredibly eye-catching and novel design to an homogenized standard scooter signals the death of an idea that’s time is ripe and appears to be lost on most (but not all) manufacturers.  R.I.P. Amarcord concept.

Optimism for Aprilia USA

Paolo Timoni is feeling good about Aprilia’s future, based on the popularity of the Tuono 1000 R Factory sportbike, but it looks like Aprilia’s biggest growth was in the scooter market. From a Piaggio Group press release:

Aprilia’s U.S. scooter retail unit sales, which rose 56 percent over the 12-month period, were aided by the addition of two models: the newest and most powerful addition to the Scarabeo family, the 500 ie, and the sophisticated, urban-dwelling SportCity 250.

Aprilia scooters are in a tough spot, marketing-wise, They’re expensive, and their Piaggio and Vespa brethren get all the attention from scooter fans while the sportbikes get all the attention from Aprilia fans (and, often, dealers). The situation is further complicated by the Scarabeo line being marketed separately from Aprilia’s other scooters. Scarabeos have their fans, but the SportCity seems to be a pretty good bike that you rarely see on the street.

Bajaj sales down

Following recent news that Italian scooter sales have dropped, Bajaj Auto’s January report shows a 15% drop in two-wheeler sales. More astonishing: In 2000, Bajaj sold close to 800,000 Chetaks, if we’re reading this data correctly, only 1,100 of the 1,66,492 two-wheelers they sold in January are scooters (presumably Kristals, their only current model). All you readers who wonder why we cover Bajaj might have a point. (TradingMarkets.com)