Category: Scooter News

Sarkozy Disses Mitterand’s “Moped”

As Brooke pointed out a while back, French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand (François nephew) regularly commutes via scooter. Last weekend, Mitterand injured his harm sliding on black ice (honorary CWC runner-up!) and France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy publicly chastized Mitterand at the first cabinet meeting of the year:

“I told you before the holidays that a minister is not just anybody,” the President said to Mitterrand in front of Cabinet colleagues. “A minister does not go around on a moped.”

That’s bad form, especially from a man who was (in 2007) criticized for overreacting to the theft of his son’s scooter (thanks again, Brooke) by requesting DNA testing to find the thief. Apparently his son’s ride was a more worthy model than Mitterand’s humble French-made MBK 125cc scooter.

MBK is a direct descendant of the legendary Motobecane Mobylette, as good a symbol of France as anything, and certainly less embarrassing than a Citröen limousine.

For shame, Nic! Humility and efficiency should be rewarded, always.

Shocking Stuff For Vintage Vespa Pothole Pilots

Sent in from former CWC Champion Matt DeVries is news about a possible great improvement in holding up the front end of your classic Vespa. Anyone who has stopped suddenly on a Sprint or steered a 150 Super over a curb, through a pot hole or any other abrupt change in road structure knows how really, really bad the front suspension is on an old Vespa. Solutions of stiffer spring and just new dampeners can help. But it seems as though aftermarket part manufacturer, BGM has come up with a nice solution for stompers of the single sided swingarm. Jet200.com has them at prices that make ordering in the USA much more sensible. Jet200 states that these new dampeners will fit “…Rally, Sprint, GT, GTR, TS, GS 150, Super, GL and so on.”. Lets hope they live up to the looks. Any testimonials please post below. (Note: hopefully I’ll get some more posts up here soon regarding the old Vespa parts available. This could be a long winter and folks should get their wrenches in gear for being ready to roll in the Spring rather than just dusting off the numbers to your favorite scooter parts vendor sometime in mid-May.)

UPDATE: Mark from Jet200.com mentioned on the ISBBS that these will not work with 8″ wheels.

Indian media looks back at the Chetak

Rediff and The Hindu look at the Bajaj Chetak and its importance to India. It’s interesting that all this nostalgia is spilling now, a few years after the Chetak was discontinued, simply because Rajiv Bajaj chose to make a big deal about the demise of the uninspired Kristal. It almost seems like the whole brouhaha was calculated to spite his father. No one will really miss the Kristal, but the decision is important on a symbolic level, and it seems strange to absolutely rule out future scooter production. Which makes me even more positive that a retro Chetak is imminent, ha. Then again, LML has that market pretty well covered now.

The end of Bajaj scooters?

Rajiv Bajaj announced last week that Bajaj Auto is halting all scooter production. Their only current model, the Kristal, is selling only a few hundred bikes per month, compared to hundreds of thousands of motorcycles, which are far more popular with Indian teenagers. The company is also looking to compete in the automotive business. A few years ago, I predicted a rebirth of a retro-styled Chetak in 2010, and even though this news sounds dire, and comes so close to the new year, family patriarch Rahul Bajaj is on my side, so I’m sticking to my prediction. Never underestimate the power of nostalgic elder Bajaj.

Scooterworks’ Secret Santa, 6 Days Of Corazzo, and Scootmoto

More great holiday sales, this time from Scooterworks and Corazzo.

Philip McCaleb of Genuine/Scooterworks and Bradford Duval of Corazzo, both actually CALLED us (on the PHONE!) to ask us to hype these sales, and they both promise you’ll never see better deals…

Scooterworks Chicago’s Secret Santa Sale is this Friday and Saturday, McCaleb promises lots of bikes from Genuine, Kymco, and more at or below dealer cost, and vintage scooters sold for the best offer. They’ll also be offering big specials from scooterworks.com (only for orders placed at the store these two days) with free shipping.

Corazzo’s already in the midst of their big “6 Days of Christmas” sale, sorry for the late heads-up, with one special per day for the next few days.

Don’t forget Scootmoto is also a great place to stock up on holiday gifts for scooterists or yourself. We don’t have any big specials because our prices are always stupid-low (and include shipping!) but we do have new 2010 Scooter Calendars and the new issue of Bumpstart and we’ll be adding a few new items in the next couple days including Voodoo’s Buddy lighting adaptors and the new American Scooterist. And all your Scootmoto orders benefit 2strokebuzz and other small-time scooterist-owned businesses!

Lambretta Pato 125N appears at EICMA

More to say about this later, but check out the Lambretta Pato 125N. This is the same company that’s been selling the “Chrome Verizon logo”-style generic Chinese scooter in Italy as the “Lambretta Pato” for a few years, so it’s almost surely a typical Chinese engine/frame with a plastic bodywork, like the “Venti/La Vita” is to the Vespa.

Piaggio shutters Canadian Scooter Corp.

Piaggio is abandoning the seemingly passionate, creative, and reasonable (and privately-owned) Canadian Scooter Corporation to establish a Canadian Piaggio subsidary, because short-term greed, total unfamiliarity with a market, and unsustainable dealer inflation is working so well for them here in the U.S. The “effective immediately, wait, no actually, effective a month ago” nature of the press release makes it clear that this was a decision that was carefully planned well in advance with CSC’s blessing and assistance, and that the transition will be entirely smooth and trouble free for dealers and customers. Sigh. (Thanks, Scooterism)

UPDATE: A source tells me that CSC brought the change on themselves, see the comments.

Piaggio: Googleproof!

Piaggio unveiled the new “USB” concept bike at EICMA this week. Just type “MP3″ or “USB” into Google and the first thing you get is Piaggio Scooters, right!? I look forward to the new Piaggio “BBW,” the Piaggio “The,” and the Piaggio “Britney Naked.” To be fair, the bike has some interesting points, but come ON, namers… Say What you will about the “Grand Dink” and the “Symply,” but they’re easy to find on the web.

You meet the weirdest people
on a Kukuxumusu

kukuxumusuBradford says, “Thank God we don’t have the Kukuxumusu.” Actually he said that like four months ago while I was on vacation, but I just rediscovered his email. I’m an atheist, so I’ll just thank the NHTSA and the EPA.

Even so, something along those lines could really help a somewhat-respectable-but-painfully-indistinct brand of scooters in the U.S. market. I’m looking at you, TGB.