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Queasy Riders: Gas costs drive the uninitiated to scooters
AP Photo
Johnny Scheff of Motoworks in Chicago guides Marnetta Porter as she practices on a demo scooter after buying a new Vespa.
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Published: May 15, 2008
PIERRE, S.D.
Joan Kohler is not a typical new scooter customer.
Kohler, 51, and a restaurant owner, bought a candy-apple red Honda last week as worries about the price of gas overrode any trepidation about learning to ride it.
With the average price of gas closing in on $4 a gallon, many cash-strapped drivers are turning to fuel-stingy motor scooters and smaller motorcycles. Dealers across the nation report brisk sales this spring, particularly for those that get from 75 to 120 mpg.
"Ninety-five percent of those who come in mention high gas prices," said Lonnie Trujillo, the sales manager for Vespa of California at Sherman Oaks, Calif. "Even though we're in Southern California and have year-round riding weather, April sales were phenomenal."
Sales of such name-brand scooters as Honda, Yamaha, Vespa and Suzuki rose 24 percent in the first quarter of the year, said Mike Mount, a spokesman for the Motorcycle Industry Council trade group -- adding that it's not exactly a hot sales period because of cool weather in much of the nation.
Many lesser-known scooters from China, Taiwan and South Korea also are sold in the United States, but Mount said that those sales figures are not readily available.
"We believe, anecdotally, that fuel prices are definitely having an effect on scooter sales," Mount said. "It seems likely that that's playing into scooter sales this quarter, as well."
The lowest-priced scooters such as the Chinese imports cost about $800, and name-brand bikes cost $2,000 to $3,000 and top-of-the-line models can go for $6,000 to $8,000.
Ross Petersen, a motorcycle and scooter dealer in South Dakota's capital, Pierre, said that scooter and medium-size motorcycle sales are propelled by gas prices. Even people who don't fit the biker mode are buying, he said.
"We're selling to people who we normally wouldn't get into our shop," Petersen said. "We're getting people who have no intention of ever moving up to a bigger motorcycle like a Harley-Davidson."
Within a day of buying her Honda from Petersen Motors, Kohler had 35 miles on her scooter. She said that the price of gas was a major consideration, although her daily commute is just a few miles.
"One hundred miles to the gallon is great," she said. "I don't do a lot of driving. It's just mainly going to work and back. And I thought, it can't be that difficult to drive." Gingerly edging to a stop on her driveway, she said that her husband worried about her safety, and so she promised to be careful.
"My family was so concerned that I'm going to get killed that I went out and got a mesh lime-green vest with reflective tape, and if other drivers can't see me, they're blind," Kohler said.
Johnny Scheff of Motoworks in Chicago, which sells Vespas, said that high gas prices are prompting consumers to find alternative means of transportation. Scooters can pay for themselves in fuel savings over one to three years, he said.
"April was a terrible weather month in Chicago, and the things were just flying out the door," he said.
At Vespa SoHo in Manhattan, the largest Vespa dealer in the country, owner Zach Schieffelin said that scooter sales also are being propelled by New Yorkers fed up with commuting on the subways.
"We are starting to see the big uptick we were expecting, and it's all starting to boom now," Schieffelin said. "All of us who ride on a regular basis are having people stop us and ask what kind of fuel economy we get."
But the boom in sales for smaller scooters isn't transferring through to bigger models. Mount, the trade group spokesman, said that sales of small and medium-size motorcycles rose 7.5 percent in the first quarter, but sales of larger, more-expensive motorcycles were down 11 percent.
Harley-Davidson chief executive Jim Ziemer said that high gas prices aren't bringing in new customers to their dealerships, but that fuel costs may help customers rationalize purchases they had already decided to make.
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