Today we bring news which does not register very far up on our green meter, but we'll fit it in nonetheless. Piaggio has recently made headlines on our site by indicating that they might offer up their hybrid scooters in the U.S. in a few years time. Now, they go and partially undo that good news with this, the Gilera GP800. Now, I am not saying that the scooter is a bad product, what I am saying is that I wish that the push for ever larger engines in scooters would come to an end. Don't get me wrong, I love scooters. But, I personally think that the scooter market is better served with machines which focus on frugality rather than outright speed. A 500cc engine with a CVT transmission is plenty large enough to get well ahead of traffic when the light turns green, and can cruise comfortably above any speed limit in America or (Autobahn aside) the rest of the world. So, why go bigger? And, if you are gonna go bigger, why not cater to the market that really seems to want to go bigger - motorcycles. Oh well, we'll all just have to wait and see, if the GP800 indeed does go into production, how well it sells. Maybe I'm wrong and scooter riders do want bigger and more powerful.
Another interesting tidbit from another source: "Piaggio is building a version of the 3-wheel MP3/Fuoco with the 839.3cc engine and CVT plus final-chain-drive from the 850Mana/GP800 which will be sold as a Moto Guzzi." Really? That would be interesting, and there might be more of a market for the three-wheeler than the two.
[Source: The Scooter Scoop and Motoblog]
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