Tag

maxi-scooter

Browsing

You might be wondering why the words “sport” and “scooter” appear together in the headline of this story. And, you might be asking yourself why we are covering the launch of a new scooter here on Asphalt & Rubber. Those are fair questions.

No, we haven’t lost our minds, and the Yamaha TMAX is no normal scooter. While we may be into our flashy sport bikes here at A&R, there is a whole world that revolves around the TMAX, which gives way to a rich tuning culture and cult status in markets outside of the United States.

Try this on for size, now in its seventh generation of production, Yamaha has sold over 275,000 TMAX scooters in the last 20 years, and now for the 2020 model year, the Yamaha TMAX 560 counts itself as the most powerful version ever produced.

We here at Asphalt & Rubber are all about the scooters. Mmm…yes, we love us some scooters! Scooters. Are. The. Best.

Ok, I will admit that it is hard to get excited about a scooter, even if it is from a luxury brand like BMW Motorrad. So loath is the lowly scooter to the modern rider, most motorcyclists won’t even extend a wave when one passes by in the other direction.

This will probably be the case with the new BMW C400X, but don’t be so quick to judge this 400cc class scoot, as it is an integral part to BMW’s urban mobility plan, and it compliments the German brand current lineup of 650cc scooters.

More importantly, we need to embrace the fact that transportation is changing, and the truth is that the more two-wheelers there are on the roads, the better it is for all motorcyclists…even if those bikes are maxi-scooters like the BMW C400X.

It would be easy to dismiss the Yamaha TMAX as just another scooter being added to Yamaha USA’s 2015 lineup, but the two-wheeler is all the rage in Europe and Japan, where it serves the interests of young speed fiends and hardcore customizers alike.

Hoping to use that popularity to bring new riders into the Yamaha brand, Yamaha Motor is bringing the venerable TMAX to US soil for the first time…and we’re actually pretty excited about that (not that Yamaha will ever let A&R critique a bike at a press launch).

Yamaha has setup a teaser website, complete with countdown clock, for a new motorcycle(s) that should break cover next week. With just over eight days on the clock, at the time of this writing, we won’t have to wait long as we speculate to what Yamaha is brewing for us.

The general consensus so far is that we will see the Yamaha YZF-R25 and Yamaha YZF-R3 twin-cylinder sport bikes, which should come in either 250cc or 300cc formats, depending on which country we are talking about. Yamaha teased us with the YZR-R25 concept at the Tokyo Motor Show, and recent trademark filings in the United States and Europe have tipped off the YZF-R3 model.

From Yamaha’s teaser video we get a quick line drawing and head-on render of a sport bike, which looks very close to the R25 model we saw in Tokyo, which helps fuel the small-displacement sport bike fire further. Also seen in the video is some sort of urban maxi-scooter, along with its presumably accompanying engine. More details as we get it.

The rumors about a Ducati Scooter for the next model year are hitting the internet hard lately, and that is perhaps unsurprising. Ducati’s sales stalled in the third quarter of this year, and the Italian motorcycle company at this point in time is simply trying to finish 2013 on par with its 2012 success.

There is also the fact that Audi AG now owns Ducati Motor Holding, and would like to see the ~44,000 unit company bump its figures into the six-figure territory, and help its German owner take a certain Bavarian brand head-on in the two and four-wheeled industries.

Scooters aren’t really our thing here at Asphalt & Rubber — I mean sure they’re fun to ride, just as long as no one sees you on one, right? That’s the joke at least, but the reality is that the more people we gett on two-wheels in America, the better; and today’s maxi-scooters are essentially just really comfortable motorbikes anyways.

That’s what makes the 2014 Kawasaki J300 such a big announcement at the 2013 EICMA show, as Kawasaki is finally offering a scooter built for the European market, and is now offering its first maxi-scooter.

While the fact that Honda is set to bring a MotoGP-inspired sport bike to market stole the show during Honda CEO Takanobu Ito’s end-of-the-fiscal-year speech, the Honda CEO also let drop the fact that Big Red is working to bring to market a larger and more “torqueful” version of its Mid Series (note the caps) maxi-scooter concept, which will debut first in the American market.

You may remember the Honda Mid Concept, a 700cc maxi-scooter design that debuted at EICMA in 2010. Featuring a smooth and fuel-efficient 700cc twin-cylinder motor, the Mid-Concept gave rise to pragmatic bikes like the Honda NC700S & Honda NC700X, which used the maxi-scooter’s 700cc Integra motor in their design.

The maxi-scooter scene in Japan borders on the lunatic fringe, as the two-wheeled segment is over-saturated with trendy young riders, as full-size motorcycles are too prohibitively expensive for 20-somethings in the island nation. This has created a vibrant tuner and modder community for scooters in Japan, which has spurred some of the most audacious builds we have ever seen. It doesn’t surprise us then to see the zecOO from Kota Nezu of Znug Design.

BMW is latching like a lamprey onto the idea of urban mobility in a big way. In addition to debuting the Husqvarna Concept E-go, zie Germans also launched the BMW Concept e at the Frankfurt International Motor Show today. An electric variant of the BMW Concept C we brought you last year, BMW realizes that when it comes to urban people-movers, the electric power train becomes a ripe contender.

Announcing that it will debut two maxi-scooters by the end of 2011 that address the needs for transportation in urban environments, with the Concept e being the electric component to that two-pronged solution. Though we are certain that the BMW Concept e is an electric maxi-scooter, we should note that BMW’s press release makes conflicting statements about the eletric Concept e, which sees the media communication also state that BMW would debut two maxi-scooters that feature a twin-cylinder internal combustion motor.