Yamaha Aerox 100

Scoot bootin'

In July 2007, an insurance company's controversial 'study' found that 33 percent of Australian drivers were "annoyed by the increased presence of scooters."
 
While the motorcycle industry was quick to criticise the 'study' for its misleading questionnaire and media-generating motives, the story did highlight one thing: the self-righteous superiority of many Aussie car drivers when they're faced with a cheaper, more efficient alternative.

I know because I cut my scootering teeth while living in Paris. In 2000, not long after arriving in the French capital, I was seduced by the squinty eyes and bright red bodywork of a year-old Yamaha Aerox 100 two-stroke. For more than four years it was the only daily-use motor vehicle in our inner-urban household.

Even when I had a rental or press car soaking up Euros in the parking station, most of my trips around Paris still made more sense on the scooter. I became so addicted to its convenience, economy and lane-carving quickness that I shipped it home with me in 2004.

With under-seat storage, a 95km/h top speed and my imported, obnoxious Parisian scooter etiquette, I wouldn't be without it. I'd suggest that Australian drivers aren't so much annoyed by scooters, as frustrated with themselves.

My return coincided with a profound change in Australia's automotive landscape.

From 2002 to 2006, scooters recorded the sort of market growth more usually associated with killer bees. Traditionally, mere handfuls of scooters had trickled onto our roads each year. Most were either the old-school Vespa PX models for retro purists, or 50cc 'twist-'n'-go' models bound for the four states (Qld, WA, SA and NT) where they may be ridden on a car licence.

This latter, tourist-driven initiative of 50cc/50km/h-restricted 'LA-category' scooters dates back to WA's hosting of the America's Cup. In Queensland, LA scooters continue to outsell larger (LC) scooters by around four to one.

Scooters were gaining momentum by the end of the 1990s, expanding at the top end with Vespa's all-new ET series and the market-debutante Speedfight from Peugeot (costing, typically, around $5500 to $7000 at the time). Meanwhile, in 1998, fibreglass Nagari legend Campbell Bolwell backed marine industry buddy Neil Black in forming Bolwell Scoota. Their range of Taiwanese-made scooters began to bridge the middle market.

Check the chart (page 103) for the actual figures, but 1999's market of around 1600 units crept up over the next three years by another 1200 units. It then took just 12 months to grow by the same figure again, to 4100 units. Suddenly, in 2004, the whole market almost doubled.

And by 2006, that figure had nearly doubled again.

"My view is that people now travel a lot more than they ever did years ago, and they see the [number] of scooters in places like Asia and Europe," says Ray Newland, motorcycle manager for the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries. He points out that small-capacity, commuter motorcycles were perhaps just as popular in the 1970s, "but what we're seeing is the rise of a scooter culture; it's a chic sort of thing, it's trendy."

Newland says he's most often asked if the scooter boom is due to petrol prices. Understandable, given the 3.5L/100km economy of a freeway-friendly, 150cc four-stroke. "I truly do not think that people buy a scooter just because petrol prices have gone up. It's a factor, but not a significant one. It's just about mobility."

It's also about affordability. Put together high disposable incomes, inner-urban apartment living (often with a single car space) and 50cc scooter prices starting from just under $2000 - 125s from around $3000 - and you have a second, versatile motor vehicle for the cost of a flat-screen TV.

Hollie Black is chairperson of the Australian Scooter Federation (ASF), the industry body of the mainstream scooter importers. These include not only the better-known European and Japanese motorcycle brands (some of which manufacture in China), but a brace of Asian scooter specialists from Korea and Taiwan.

Black ascribes the "big jump" of 2004 to the arrival of the latter; it's like the price sensitivity at the bottom end of the car market, only concentrated.

"It was very much prestige-driven in 1999," she explains. "Today, a small percentage is prestige-driven, a much larger percentage is ‘what's the cheapest thing I can bloody buy,' and value for money - something I can still be riding at 80,000km, with easy servicing and so on."

The ASF was behind the scooter retailers' telling decision, starting in 2006, to display at the Australian International Motor Show, rather than the motorcycle industry's own show. Ray Newland of the FCAI, which runs both expos, certainly doesn't have his nose out of joint.

"They [the ASF] believe that there's more of their clientele who drive cars and wants to add a scooter to their fleet, than there is in the pure enthusiast coming up from any two-wheeled variety. That's a distinction that's quite recognised in our industry."

"Oh, it's not motorcyclists, by any means - it's car drivers," the ASF's Hollie Black enjoins. "It's 17 to 77. And it's 50/50 male/female."

In other words, say detractors, it's a lot of people inexperienced on two wheels, inadequately (if often attractively) attired and wobbling their stinking, screaming two-stroke scooters among traffic that's more ruthless and heavier than ever. Then they supposedly block the footpaths and back alleys of Melbourne where, thanks to the efforts of the Motorcycle Riders' Association of Australia (MRAA), two-wheelers can still be parked.

There's no snooting of scooters among motorcyclists, according to MRAA president, Dale Maggs. "In the early days, a lot of us started riding on Honda postie bikes, CB125s - my first bike was a Malvern Star Autocycle. Cheaper modes of transport are still pretty much entrenched in motorcycling."

Maggs is also amazed, and pleased, to have witnessed the spread of scooters to regional towns. "I saw a bloke in the main street of Dimboola [Vic] on a scooter," he chuckles. "He had a suit on, and he was either the postmaster general or the bank manager.

It's probably the cheapest form of transport that can get you a big distance in a short amount of time, and the environmental and economic footprint is so good."

Uhh, two-strokes? Environmental footprint? Of the 50cc LA scooters available, roughly half are four-strokes; in larger capacities, two-strokes are becoming rare. And none are the two-strokes of Roman Holiday: Aprilia's DiTech 50cc direct-injection two-stroke gets 2L/100km and is as clean as a four-stroke.

"Two-strokes have never been brought up in any of the meetings I've had, and the responsible importers are doing things like catalytic converters on two-strokes, anyway," says Hollie Black.

The reluctance of authorities in NSW and Victoria to approve LA-category riding on a driver's licence is supposedly based on other skin-prints scooters might leave on the environment. At the same time, neither government seems able or willing to provide accident data to support their safety stance.

"When Constable Joe-on-the-spot gets to the scene, there's not the categories on his report form to say it's a scooter or whatever else," explains the FCAI's Newland. "Sometimes you can track it back from the registration data, but most of the time when we ask for solid data from the jurisdictions ... they just haven't got it."

Newland mentions two often-cited scooter fatalities; one a tourist crashing head-on with a 4WD in Queensland and another, a rear-end impact in SA. Neither could really be called a scooter-specific accident.

However, 50cc tourist riders often overlook protection: "People ride them in their bathers - with a helmet on, but that's it," Newland says. "If they go arse-over-head, they come to grief with much loss of skin."

Albeit, one might add, wearing a better-quality helmet, and surrounded by more vehicular protection than the accepted norms for bicycles.

Scooting hazards certainly aren't one-sided. According to Newland, one downside of Australia's new scooter culture is that it hasn't grown from the ground up. "Drivers here don't recognise you on the road like they do in Europe, because those drivers have graduated from scooters or mopeds themselves, from a very early age. When they get behind the wheel, they know that they're out there. [Drivers] don't know that here."

So whether you're taking to two wheels or staying on four, wise up to scooters. To quote a famous car driver: The life you save might be mine.