Category: Scooter News

Kinetic makes (a little) progress (finally)

Indian business website Sify reports Kinetic Motors is seeking $15 million from investors to fund its production and development of Italjet scooters. It’s about time, the deal was announced two years ago. The first Kinetic Italjet, the 170cc Millenium (the name was already dated when Italjet introduced it in 2000), is due later this month, with the Jet Set (c. 2001) to follow in June. One wonders when they’ll get around to re-introducing the more-than-a-decade-old Velocifero, let alone the Dragster.

Reese Witherspoon Rides the Line

Hello Magazine (UK) reports:

The diminutive performer has been turning heads in the British capital as she shows off her riding skills on a black Vespa. The mum-of-two is more accustomed to the back seat of a limousine than the saddle of a scooter, but she has become a biker chick for the film Penelope, in which she plays a pizza delivery girl.

Piaggio & Aprilia sponsor safety classes in Italy

From Motoblog: Piaggio e Aprilia Partner di “Sicuri su due ruote”. It’s in Italian, so I can just make out the gist of it, but apparently Piaggio and Aprilia have invested in safety classes by supplying some scooters. Considering the difficulty of getting into an MSF class, and the expense of private classes, (not to mention the difficulty of targeting the scooter market for advertising) an industry-led initiative would be a fantastic idea here in America, especially since as far as we know, there are no scooter-specific classes or schools here. Does your local shop support a riding safety school, or host their own? They should! Let us know.

Madass USA

Sachs MadassWhile Xkeleton‘s Trickster, a Sachs Madass knockoff, has been creating a lot of online buzz lately, few have noticed that the real thing is now available. It’s being imported by Tomberlin, who otherwise imports mostly dodgy Chinese scooters and who unfortunately took the halfass “bring ’em in and sell ’em as farm equipment” route rather than dealing with homologation and making it the coolest street-legal moped of all time. (the Trickster also lacks DOT/EPA approval) (see comments regarding DOT/EPA approval). But we’re glad to Sachs back in the US, and we’d be even happier to see the 125cc model, as if. (Sach’s official Madass site) Remember the early ’90s Madison, WI scooter club MADass? They’d be stoked.

Smallwood leaves SuperSonicScooters

Smallwood wheelie, WKRP 2003Scott Smallwood announced today that he will leave SuperSonicScooters next week. Smallwood established the Columbus, OH scooter shop in the mid-90s and made it famous on the strength of his Vespa smallframe tuning expertise. Smallwood dominated the MASS scooter racing league on a specials-class Vespa smallframe, before moving on to GP125 motorcycle racing, and is one of scooterdom’s best-loved and most colorful personalities. Scott leaves SSS to work for Trek Bicycles, he was a successful bicycle racer before a knee injury ended his career and started his interest in motorcycles and scooters.

His open letter to scooterists and friends follows:
Continue reading “Smallwood leaves SuperSonicScooters”

LML locks out workers at “Stella” factory.

DNA India reports that LML has locked out workers at their Kanpur plant, where Genuine’s Stella scooter, among other scooters and motorcycles, is manufactured. LML declared the lockout this morning in response to “external rowdy elements…disrupting the peaceful atmosphere and working of the factory.” LML management failed to pay employees full wages and has suspended production in response to financial losses and restructuring.

Paris

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We got back from Paris yesterday, here are our photos of Paris in general (or just check out the scooter-related photos)

Things I noticed:

  • Scooters and motorcycles are everywhere, even as the temperature hovered around the freezing point. (Lap aprons are very common on motorcycles and scooters.) Basically, the whole town sounds like you’re at a scooter rally, all day and all night.
  • Scooters easily outnumber motorcycles 3-1. Most motorcycles we saw were small-displacement and Asian, the few bigger ones we saw were usually Ducatis or BMWs.
  • It’s impossible to walk a block on any street in Paris without seeing several scooters parked on the sidewalk. Nirvana for American scooterists, but probably no fun for most pedestrians.
  • Piaggio definitely dominates the market, even over Peugeot. Modern Vespas (ETs and GTs) and Piaggios (X9s and Libertys) are everywhere, and P-series scooters were far more common than i expected, maybe 1 out of 20 scooters was a P or PK-series. There were a good number of Peugeots, but mostly older beaters, I saw only a couple Speedfights. In Ireland a couple years ago, Gilera Runners dominated the market, but we only saw one in Paris. Kymco and Aprilia also had a decent share of the market. Chinese and Taiwanese scooters were common, but I saw few Hondas or Yamahas, and no “retro” Asian scooters other than one Honda Joker (called the “Shadow” there?).
  • Most scooters, even the relatively expensive Vespas, were healthily thrashed, parked against walls and each other with stickers and dents galore. They’re transportation there, not fetish objects.
  • We did see several nicely-maintained vintage Vespas that were clearly owned by lifestyle scooterists, mostly smallframes like the one above.
  • As far as 4-wheeled vehicles, I couldn’t believe the number of Smart Cars, they’re cleaning up there. Minis (both old and new) were common, and all manner of tiny Citröens, Peugeots, and Renaults were everywhere. VW and Audi were probably the biggest importers. All the cars were tiny: the streets are narrow, traffic and parking is a nightmare, and gas is expensive. One of the biggest popular cars was a 2-door version of the Toyota Rav-4. Like the scooters, the cars mostly looked like they’d had a hard life.

I’ll post more later about the two scooter shops we visited.

Scooter Press features “Vespa 60” customs and Kymco 2007 models

The new edition of Rubbermag‘s spinoff site Scooter Press features a vague-ish story (with photos) on Piaggio’s Vespa GT60 and LX60 custom scooters, on display at the Milan motorcycle show. Also featured is a handy rundown of Kymco’s 2007 (already?) product line, featuring 8 new scooters. We’re jetlagged and phoning it in tonight, re-writing re-written press releases. Can you tell? Kymco does have some neat new stuff, though, check it out.