My neighbor Chuck drives a Chevy Pickup with a 6 liter engine that gets 11 mpg. Last week he saw my light on around midnight and came banging on my door. It seems that the money he had budgeted for gasoline has gone beyond that budget eating into food, vacations and everything else. He got the truck to pull a camper and uses it to commute to work.
"This guy at work bought a motorcycle and I was thinking, why spend $9000 to get 35mpg when I can spend $1500 on a scooter that gets over 100 mpg."
This is coming from a man who loves big Detroit iron and has a truck named Big Red. Ford was right when they said there is a structural difference occurring in the market. Yes. Basically, people can't afford to eat or go anywhere so they are rethinking life.
I have owned three motorcycles and have shopped for them endlessly even when I wasn't in the market. There are so many varieties of motorcycles and it can be confusing, but the scooter market in the Spring of 2008 is a strange combination of backyard entrepreneurship and an evolving supply and demand issue.
A wide assortment awaits the buyer from major makes in motorcycle dealerships to Chinese-built platforms that come with many different names and seem to have a lot of the same parts.
Follow along on the scooter adventure and see what we bought.
Leave a comment