subject: Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki...The Best Fast Gas Scooters [print this page] Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki...The Best Fast Gas Scooters
You know the saying, Everything old becomes new again someday. Well, this is true for mopeds too. A lot of scooter producers are coming out with new scooters that look like the old ones. I think it's awesome. I really like the way retro vehicles look. Scooters like the Honda Metropolitan and the Vespa GVS 250 look like classic scooters from days gone by.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, scooters made there way to the market in Europe. They resembled what we think of as a moped in today's world. A bike with a motor attached is kind of a crude way to think of it. By the late 1910's people in the USA were driving scooters, but they still never reached the popularity of the auto mobile. Here is a look at some of the better know scooters on the market today:
Cushman --The Cushman Company produced motor scooters from 1936 to 1965 and they were most widely used during WWII. If you've ever seen some of those old WWII documentaries or films, these are most likely what the GI's are cruising around on.
Mitsubishi -- One of the first scooters made in Japan was the Mitsubishi Silver Pigeon. It was a scooter largely made of warplane wheels and discarded warplane parts, believe it or not.
The King of Retro - Vespa -- The Vespa is one of the most popular scooter companies today. They are considered the standard for scooters in Europe.
Honda -- Honda launched the most popular scooter of all time, the Super Cub, in 1958. With more than 60 million sold worldwide, it is the best selling powered vehicle of all time. Pretty impressive. If you can get your hands on one of these, you will have a classic on your hands.
They have built a ton of different models since the Cub in 1958. The fact that they have sold more scooters than any other company worldwide should give you a pretty good idea of what kind of scooter you can expect from this company.
The old style look is one thing. These things are very efficient is you are looking to save a few bucks. With 4 stroke, liquid cooled, fuel injected engine, many of the small scooters can get around 100 mpg.
