Goodbye, dick jokes; goodbye, Morphous

Ryan of Cold Weather Challenge fame just pointed out to us that Yamaha has dropped the Morphous from their U.S. lineup, and it looks like it’s off the menu elsewhere, too. I can’t picture anyone standing around a Yamaha dealership with a big wad of cash and not buying a T-Max, but even the Barcalounger fans weren’t getting excited about the gargantuan penis-shaped 250 when the 400cc Majesty was about the same price. If Ryan will miss it, few others will, Guzman’s review for Motorcycle.com last fall notes that even after three years on the market, no one outside of hardcore scooterists and Jay Leno had heard of it.

Blur Burnout

Alas, no there were no jaw-dropping surprises at Indianapolis, and I’m sure I’m the only person who even asked Dean about the Blur at the Genuine booth, but just for old times’ sake, here’s a video of our beloved ’06 Blur 150, hopped up and Nicky Hayden’ed, in burnout action, courtesy of Mike at ScootOver in Tuscon. He sent it, what, two months ago, and I just re-found it, hopefully our Indy coverage will come together faster than that.

Life imitates 2sb t-shirts

When we made our “DOT Flip-Flop” t-shirts, we never thought anyone would be dumb enough to sell riding sandals, let alone buy them. Save yourself the experience of having your toes grinded off and stick to the t-shirt instead, we still have some L, XL, and 3XL “Chocolate Brown” shirts and a few “‘Safety Orange” smalls and mediums. We’ve got a few new items over at Scootmoto, too. (Thanks for the tip on the real sandals, Professor.)

Beer run

If it’s starting to sound like dealer expo is mostly about booze, guilty as charged. We had a great cheap Cajun dinner at this place Yats, too.

Finance a Vectrix

Electric scooter manufacturer Vectrix Vectrix announced yesterday that they’ll offer financing through Sparta Financial. The Vectrix VX-1 seems to be the only currently-available electric bike that can compete with over-50cc gas scooters’ speed and range (A Vectrix is holding the lead in the Cold Weather Challenge, for instance), but its price tag is daunting, apparently they’re banking on financing (and a less expensive, lower-performance VX-1E model) to make the bike more attractive to consumers.

“One of those little things that buzz by in traffic”

Just when you think you’ve seen every vintage Vespa film there is, YouTube digs up more gold. This 1961 Vespa commercial, presumably produced by ’60s East-coast distributor Vescony, makes a very clear argument for the Vespa as a commuter vehicle, then pushes their luck with exaggerated mileage promises (125mpg?) and oversimplification of the engine to “three moving parts.” (The party line has always been four, which already seems a bit oversimplified, unless you’re counting, for example, the entire transmission consisting of the gearshift linkage, gear cluster, shifting cross, and Christmas tree as “one part.”) A great find. (Thanks to Dave McCabe.)

UPDATE: VCOA historian John Gerber comments:

It’s definitely Vescony, but it’s 1964 NOT 1961. It’s a Carl Alley produced commercial. Several were produced, but Piaggio would not share in any of the costs for airing them. They were never shown nationally, but some of the larger dealers showed them locally during non-primetime. In general, they were way too expensive to be shown even at off times. I saw one only once for my local dealer during a Saturday afternoon movie re-run. If Piaggio had enough sense to underwrite serious advertising in the U.S. things might have gone a lot different for them.

2009 Chicago Motorcycle Show

We’ve threatened to skip the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show the last few years, but we always ended up going anyway. This year, the promise of a new dedicated “Scooter Pavilion” finally scared us out of attending (success frightens us), but 2sb readers Maggie and Sara filled us in on what (little) we missed. Maggie treked up from St. Louis and was unimpressed with the Scooter Pavilion, aside from the Aprilia Scarabeo makeover and Kymco’s new Yager GT300i. (Here’s Maggies complete flickr gallery.) We agree, Maggie, the Yager looks like some good competition for the Sym HD200i (and PGO’s I’ME, if we ever get it here). As far as that other beast, we generally detest tribal graphics, but it works on the Scarabeo. Also: We’re really hoping those pinstripes aren’t standard on the Kymco Grand Vista. Sara, on the other hand, enjoyed Tow-Pac’s booth: “I can’t even imagine how slow a Honda Metropolitan is with a trike kit on it, but it was good for a giggle.” Sara, please be sensitive to people who, for whatever reason, can’t enjoy two-wheeled riding… and, uh, want to go really slow.

We’ve almost finished our Sym writeup from last year’s Dealer Expo in time for this year’s Dealer Expo, which is this weekend, by the way. We’ll be digging up dirt from dealers, seeing new bikes and products, and posting live from the show all weekend, with more in-depth coverage to follow next week.

Charles Karel Bouley has lots of green

I applaud you, Charles Karel Bouley. Hopefully typical Americans will take a break from job-hunting or digging for milk money in their hand-me-down couch cushions to follow in your green footsteps and buy two Piaggio MP3s. We’ll all slap some solar panels on our San-Francisco-area beach house/recording studios, too, while we’re at it. Thanks for making such a huge, inspirational sacrifice for America.

A winnah…

Polinarchy (Poliana from Philadephia) is the winner of our “When will the Razz fall over?” contest. She guessed Friday, and both Ryan and I were out of town, so we’re not exactly sure when it fell, but we figure it was probably sometime Friday night or Saturday morning. After more than a month with snow on the ground, it all magically disappeared in two days. Poliana wins a $10 gift certificate from our sister site Author illnoisePosted on Categories Chicago, Cold Weather, Giveaways, Scootmoto1 Comment on A winnah…