Who makes good scooters other than Honda, Yamaha, and Vespa - I have never heard of a lot of the brands you carry?
Who are all these scooter manufacturers anyway?
Remember when the only cars that anybody knew about were Ford, GM, and Chrysler? Then along came Honda, Toyota, and Datsun (Nissan) and everything began to change.
The scooter industry has a bit of a parallel but the names are different. In scooters, in Canada, everyone knows Honda, Yamaha, and Vespa. But, just like in the car industry, there are a lot of great competitors that the well-informed consumer should know about. These come primarily in the form of great Taiwanese brands such as KYMCO, PGO, TGB, and SYM. Others such as Peugeot are very popular in Europe but barely on the radar here. In fact, KYMCO is one of the biggest selling scooters in Italy and yet most Canadians have never been exposed to this brand. (KYMCO is the #1 selling scooter in Taiwan)
At Scooter Underground, we make it our business to shop the world for the best brands that deliver the best value. Value consists of quality, service, reliability, parts availability, warranty, and of course, initial cost.
We have found many of the best brands and we are excited to tell you about them, get you to test ride them, and hopefully make them your choice for your personal transportation.
A word about Chinese scooters
At this point, we have a very low confidence level in most of the “value priced” scooters made in China. We have not found any scooters in the sub $2,000 CDN price point that we would shell out our own money for. We want to sell responsible transportation solutions, not headaches.
After trying many brands, we have not found one that we are willing to add to our product line. I am sure that this will change over time and when it does, we will let you know.
Some of our great Taiwanese brand names like SYM are making some of their models in China and our initial impressions of these units are favorable. (At this point, all KYMCO scooters in Canada are made in Taiwan even though KYMCO does have some manufacturing facilities in China.)
We are well aware that Honda, Yamaha, and many other big names are making products in China as the manufacturing world moves in this direction. Factories set up in China with the proper management and Quality Control Processes will undoubtedly be the way of the future for many automotive and power sports companies.
At his point, with your hard earned money, we would not recommend the purchase of any “new” Chinese made scooters. We have found too much variability in the quality and very problematic parts availability and parts fit. At Scooter Underground, our entry level price point for a gas scooter is the SYM Symply at $1,995. It is made in SYM`s Chinese factory under their supervision and it is the only scooter we have found in this `value level`that meets our standards.
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