Kymco 2009 Range
Kymco have released their 2009 range for the USA with the tagline "More smiles per gallon" which as cheezy as it is... really is rather cute and clever. I suspect this will be the direction any marketing takes as well.
The range is reasonably broad encompassing quite a few 50cc machines: these are the People (back into the market and at an even lower MSRP than before), Sento, Sting and the 4 stroke "Super 8" 50's. They then move up a gear to the People and Super 8 150cc bikes
The two bikes that will no doubt make the biggest stir will be the "Xciting" 250 and 500cc maxi machines with racy styling and a claimed 8% gain in HP (although I don't see a power figure in the press spec sheet) apparently via the change to fuel injection. It will be interesting to se if these admittedly pretty good looking big bikes have the goods. According to the specs they have dropped a little weight too so it will be interesting to see how, the 500 especially, compares to say the Gilera 500 with which it clearly shares some styling cues.
Will let you know the result when we manage to finally squeeze some product out of our distributor. 
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Scooting around the gas crunch
An interesting article from the L.A. Times - www.latimes.com
Scooting around the gas crunch By Susan Carpenter
"As gasoline prices soar, scooter sales are booming. From mini to maxi, they'll take you from the corner grocery to the freeway (and some of these cycles get more than 100 miles per gallon).Harley-Davidson might be wishing it made a scooter about now. In fact, most motorcycle manufacturers without one in their lineups have got to be feeling the pain. Motorcycle sales are down this year.
Scooters, on the other hand, are selling as fast as their little wheels can carry them from showroom floors. Sales have jumped 23.6% in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007, and they're likely to continue their quick and upward trajectory.
Daily headlines and the signs at your nearest Chevron already give the reason, but I'll spell it out: G-A-S. Depending on the displacement, a scooter gets between 40 and 120 miles per gallon, compared with 27.5 mpg for the average car and about 50 for a motorcycle.
I thought I'd sample the lower and upper ends of the displacement range to show the breadth of the segment. With scooter sales so strongly tied to gas prices, I chose the 125-150 cc class for its fuel efficiency, price and speed, which is fast enough to keep up with city traffic, and the 400-650 cc "maxis," because even the largest of the large are more fuel efficient than most cars or motorcycles." |
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| Friday, 09 May 2008 15:01 |
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| Vespa GTS 300 Super
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Vespa GTS 300 Super
So the rumours have been confirmed. Vespa are releasing a bigger engined bike to try and gain some of the ground lost to Honda with the SH300 that is so popular in Europe. The GTS 300 is a 278cc scooter making basically the same horsepower and weighing in at pretty close to the 250. The 250 feels pretty good on the road so the extra horses and 22Nm of torque @ 5000rpm should make this bike a marginally more interesting to ride. I have to ask the question... why did they not go the whole hog, make an actual 300 that makes 25 - 30 horsepower and be done with it? No idea but then they didn't ask me when they developed it.
The new GTS300 comes in a huge variety of colours... Black... and White and personally I think this is not a bad move, they both look great and work with the styling which is basically the same as the 250, bar some vents in the side pods, a different shaped horn cover and revisions to the seat along with some other minor touchups.
As always the Vespa press release may as well just say "If there is a god, this is what it would ride" because as far as I can tell from the release the sun shines out from the 300gts's rear orifice. It is possible that it is as good as they say... the 250 is certainly a very good machine but as noted above... how much better can it really be? We will let you know as soon as we get our grubby paws on one!
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| Thursday, 01 May 2008 20:46 |
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| Lap times are go...
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Lap Times Are Go...
We've finally secured the use of our local race track so we can begin testing each and every scooter over a timed lap. For those of us concerned with which scooter's really are the best handling and fastest of the bunch...now we will know for certain. All reviews where it is possible will feature a full speed lap time from now on. We'll also be posting a full article with the track details shortly...bring it on. The first bike we ran round the track was the Suzuki Street Magic 50; the article will be online on shortly.
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