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.

2sb not dead

No, we haven’t posted in a couple weeks, sorry. There’s been some big news, too, and we’ll catch up soon.

In the past month or so:
Slaughterhouse
House guests every weekend since before Slaughterhouse
Old friends/tenants bought a house and moved out
We painted and recarpeted our apartment
New friends/tenants moved in
Milena started kindergarten
Work (the job that pays me) has been nuts
Hockey season started
Playstation Fifa10 demo was released

So with all that, and a baby due in a couple weeks, it’s not been good news for 2strokebuzz, but it’s been a fun/busy/productive couple weeks in other ways. I’ve been helping with homework, getting involved in the PTA, sanding, painting, lifting boxes, and I still squeezed in a little time to ride the SYM 150cc “Classic” (Wolf) at Slaughterhouse and my virtual Fire lost to Chelsea, Barça, Bayern Munich, and Juventus a few times. So it’s all good, we’re glad you’re still paying attention, and any day now, Brooke will post something to shame me back into business, both here and at Scootmoto, where we’ve got several new products we haven’t even listed yet. And I’ve done a little groundwork on a new mostly-non-scooter related but hopefully-great web project. Thanks for your patience and support! We’ll be back.

IMPORTANT 2SB RSS/EMAIL INFO

I’m cutting off Feedburner, it used to be a great service, but since Google bought it, I haven’t even been able to see my stats, and the help forum was apparently abandoned months ago. I have no idea how many subscribers I have, or if my feeds are working correctly, So this is the last RSS feed you’ll see, and the last email you’ll get for a while.

Cutting this cord will force me to set up a better service, and I will post that info prominently on the site when it’s all working, hopefully over the weekend. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it just needed to be done. It sucks to have to start from scratch with RSS and newsletter subscribers, but I need to re-take control of my feeds.

New hope for Indian Italjets?

Remember Kinetic Motors and their plan to produce seven Italjet models in India? Only one (The Italjet Millennium, renamed the Kinetic “Blaze”) ever came to market, and Kinetic was bought out a year ago by Mahindra & Mahindra. Now M&M is reconsidering Kinetic’s Italjet plan. If you’ve been pining for a new Velocifero or Dragster for the past decade, you’ve seen your dreams crushed by Italjet, Italjet’s various US importers, Kinetic, Italjet again, and Diamo/LS Motorsports, so we don’t see how your luck is going to change, but maybe this will give you false hope again.

VVV: David Bowie “That’s Motivation”

Last week’s Vespa Vednesday VIdeo was David Bowie’s “Absolute Beginners”, the title track from the Julien Temple film. This week’s video also features Bowie, but this time it’s a clip from the film itself:

Artist: David Bowie
Song: “That’s Motivation”
Album: Absolute Beginners film soundtrack (1986)
Scooter(s): Vespa GS
Scooter content: 20 seconds
Jump to the good parts: 3:56 to end

There’s not much to add to last week’s rant about “Absolute Beginners,” the musical. Great book, sort-of-embarassing film. As much as I love Bowie, his performance (or is it his character, Vendice Partners?) is a bit stilted and creepy. His Busby-Berkeley-inspired paean to advertising was probably meant to be the film’s centerpiece, but as far as overblown showtune production pieces go, Ray Davies’ Music-Hall romp “Quiet Life” steals the show and somehow seems to fit the story better. And Edward Tudor-Pole’s “song” isn’t on YouTube, but there’s a Vespa billboard in the background. If all this makes you want to see the film, I’m doing it wrong. OK, fine, it’s a guilty pleasure. But the book is a must!

But hey, back to the point, there’s a scooter in Bowie’s number. And it’s not really so bad as I remembered it. And another VVV is written and posted, on an actual Vednesday. That’s Motivation!

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.

Take the Kymco

Toronto’s Kymco dealer ran transit ads on Toronto’s TTC system imploring riders to “Take The Kymco,” (TTK). A clever idea, too bad they flagrantly copied the TTC trademark and TTC removed the ads. Whatever your feelings about scooters’ impact on ecological, economical, and traffic impact, public transportation is surely better, but that said, public transportation riders are probably a wise target market for scooter dealers!