Modern Vespa

This week just picked up a BMW 650 GT.

Loving it! Past 3 years been riding a Vespa 250 GTS. Was looking for something larger. So far, thoroughly enjoying the bike. Easy riding w solid power. Heated seats and handle bars (option) is cool feature for an old-timer like me.

Only issue: I am 6'4" and lumbar support pad a bit crampy. May need to get some customizing here. The adjustments on the lumbar support pad don't help here. Does anyone have any thoughts here? What options might I have here.

Also, here is a link to a detailed review of the 2012 bike.

http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/motorcycles/2012models/2012-BMW-C650GT.htm

I test drive the GT650. I'm 6'2 and I do not even remember the lumbar support being an issue???

What do you think of the electric windshield? Is there an optimum position, or do you just leave it in the highest position, where I thought it did the most good.

Picture?

I would imagine you'd get the best help on your BMW on a BMW forum.

I just got mine on tuesday gt 650.....moved from the bv 500..... love it!!!

Im jealous. I sat on one at the factory in Munich this past June. I really liked it. reminded me of the Burgmans but with more horsepower. I didnt get to ride it though. So what are they selling for.

Congratulations. Ride it safely and often.

congrats. please continue to post ride reports and thoughts. I've been intrigued by that ride.

Congrats agatsal! I picked mine up on Wed. and am absolutely loving it. I haven't had a bike in the last 20+ years on which I didn't replace the seat with a custom though, and this will be no exception. I've always used Corbin before but this time I think I may try a Russell Day Long, they seem well regarded by the long distance touring crowd if you can tolerate the looks. I doubt they've done a C650GT yet given that this bike has only been stateside for a few weeks, but I plan to give them a call shortly and maybe do a ride in up in Shasta.

Oh, and Lothar, so far I am leaving mine in the low position around town for airflow and when I get out of the urban environment, moving it up for silence. (I'm only 5'7", so if you're much taller your experience would obviously be different, but for me, at or near the top position, it creates fairly quiet air even without plugs, something I've never had before.) I'm still experimenting though.

Did you compare it to other maxie's before you made your choice?

What did you see in the BMW that made you pull the trigger?

Based on the unscientific sample here on the MV Forum, BMW may sell more of these in the U.S. than what they have expected. We've got three known takers on here, and they've not even been up for sale for long.

Congrats all! Ya'll have got all the benefits of a full-featured motorcycle and maxi scooter rolled up into one package.

Been a couple of days since I was on the BMW forums, but best I could find, MV has FAR more information and interest so far than the Beemer forum does. Just FYI.

My impression of the folks on the Beemer forums are that, for the most part, they look down on scooters. I haven't been on any BMW-oriented forum since before the news of the new BMW scooters appeared (having deliberately stopped participating there) so I'm not entirely sure what their current attitude might be.

That's interesting. According to the salesman at the central London BMW dealer, quite a few owners were buying the C scooters to complement their bike.

The question is, Should I buy/ ride the 650gt or save my cash and ride my Vespa while waiting for the 1000gt to come out.

I think a 1000cc is highly unlikely as the 650cc engine supply was contracted to Kymco. They already had a very similar engine (700cc for the MyRoad) in production. They do not have bigger than this.

It's probably more of a US thing.

I went to the San Mateo/Bay Area International Motorcycle Show Friday night and the BMW scooters were surrounded with people the whole time I could see them, looking like the hit of the show. I knew a lot more about them than the BMW show staff did though, which was odd - hopefully the dealers will run with the ball rather than dropping it, as I think I could have sold a few just in the time I spent in the booth!

I'm new to scootering in the USA, although rode for years through the streets of Beijing. It's great fun and a good way to get around. I'm used to $5+/gallon for gas in Beijing plus street congestion that puts NYC's traffic to shame. This BMW should spark wider interest & anything that gets more Scooters on the roads can only be a good thing!

I attend a Moto Hang here with a lot of BMW riders. They smile at the Vespa as they turn towards their 1200 GS monsters or big BMW touring bikes. The F650 and 800 BMW get the same smiles as the Vespa. Extrapolating I expect a BMW scooter rider won't ever be fully integrated into the Teutonic fold -- not for another generation. Or until the scooter has a boxer style engine.

A few more of these threads, and I'm gonna petition our dear leader to start a "Not-So-Italian" section!

+1!

+2
Like I said, anything that gets more scooters on the road is a good thing!

Ausgezeichnet!

The local Beemer dealer also happens to carry Vespa/Piaggio, though in somewhat limited quantities. So, they are pretty excited about the new scooters. However, they were pretty clear that some of their brethren dealers weren't as excited.

They've been here a couple of weeks already and I haven't gone and looked at them yet. So far so good...

Come ooooooonnnn... You know you want to...

Rename the site Modern Scooter?

We rode the demo down the Natchez Trace this weekend. Every bit as nice as they say. You should try it out and see for yourself.

All these posts and not a single picture?

Stop it!! You aren't helping me.

I'm sure I will test it soon - do they have both bikes in inventory at this point?

Far be it from me to deny you. Here she is on her maiden voyage home from the dealer.

Plus 1.

However, if we're going to start suggesting more sub forum sections, I have a suggestion for three others that are even more needed.

1. Not Scooter Related.

This would get all of these NSF's off the General Discussion Board, which many of us are
sifting through each day.

2. Piaggio Scooters (other than MP3s)

3. Sport City / Scarabeo Scooters

That's a negatory on all three. MV's design is, well, by design.

Forum admins, as a rule, are idiots. One obvious sign of their stupidity is that they were dumb enough to start a forum to begin with, and are now saddled with that until they die or sell it to VerticalScope.

But the real proof of exactly how stupid forum admins are can be found by examining the way the forum is subdivided. The number one mistake that most idiot forum admins make is to over-subdivide their forum areas into neat little categories for no other reason except that they can. It makes sense, right?

Wrong! Back away from the keyboard, idiot forum admin!

The very worst way to organize a forum is according to product line, which effectively balkanizes the forum into individual subspecies of members, each unaware of what the other ones are talking about, even when there's lots of crossover. For proof of this, just have a look at the nearly blind cave salamanders that inhabit the MP3 forum, or the galapagos turtles over in NSM. For the most part, they only know what's going on in their respective sections, with only a few brave souls stumbling out of the darkness into General Discussion to see what the rest of the world is doing.

Frankly, Piaggio and Vespa bikes have far more in common than they have differences, barring the obvious MP3. Why on earth would we split them up? The engines are the same. Much of the mechanicals are the same. Riding is the same. And thanksgiving recipes are the same regardless of what bike you ride.

So no. We shall not be making that mistake here.

As for NSR, we actually like it this way. If you think you want a steady diet of scooter content and nothing but scooter content 24/7 and 365 days a year, I would politely suggest that (a) you're wrong, that's not what you really want, trust me on this, and (b) the rest of us who are here year round, year after year might actually enjoy some variation in our diet.

People come to MV for the scooter content, alright. When they've had their fill of it, they stay for the banter, with a side of scooter content. That's how it works. Trust me, you'll get bored of the scooter content too. This I know from years of experience.

You wouldn't happen to be a forum admin somewhere else, would you? If so, errr... sorry man.

Jess is right on some of the folks not seeing whats going on in other posts. I know alot of MP3 folks who won't even look at the general discussion area. There is alot of information to share between scoots. Not all pertains to an individuals particular scoot but some stuff does cross over and might spark an idea or interest that can be used on another scoot.

Word of warning to my fellow MP3ers - I started looking at the general forum a few months ago - and had to add a bike just to fit in.

Now that's funny!

But there is a reverse problem with everything being in an all-inclusive, General Forum.

Each day, there are more than one page of new topics started. There is no way I will take the time to see what each one of those are about, and I base whether or not I'll click on a new thread by how well the original poster designs his or her title. In other words, I'm guessing which threads will be interesting or informative based solely on the thread title, and I end up opening alot of threads that are totally uninteresting to me personally. And what is worse, I'm sure there have been many, many threads that I would have learned from that I didn't open, because, either, the subject matter of the original post was much better than the title indicated, or, I didn't scroll through enough pages that day. Of course some of this is inevitable with any forum format, but I think everything, for everybody, being rolled up in one forum makes this dilemma worse.

I do see the point about over subdividing. I tried out a forum yesterday sponsored by AF1, and they must have thirty-five sub forums or so, which is crazy. You go and find the subforum that suits you, and then somebody may answer a question after about a week or so, so the forum becomes worthless to everyone.

I know we're not supposed to criticize the format, and this forum has the best people, so there is no way I'm leaving (unless forced to), but--hey--I'm not the one who brought it up.
I didn't mean to ruffle feathers. I can live with what we've got!

The thing about forums (any well-trafficked forum) is that the topic will come up again. Either the same topic will get bumped by someone asking a follow-up question, or someone will ask the same question again a week later. And then again the week after that. And then again the next month, ad nauseum ad infinitum. That's just the nature of things. So don't panic about missing a topic. I can guarantee it will be repeated. It's even worse than that. If the forum makes users hunt through multiple subforums for content, they will quickly tire of the chore and go away. Since any forum has to reach a certain critical mass in order to attract and keep users, such over-divided forums have essentially signed their own death warrant by their organizational structure. Users aren't always searching for an answer -- more often than not, they're looking for daily reading. The tendency to over-divide might serve the user looking for an answer, but it completely ruins the experience for users who are just looking for daily reading. You can criticize the format, as long as it's constructive. You just can't whine about forum policy. Those are different things. So no harm no foul.

so its all about the looks on the outside and you don't know whats on the inside then.

It just doesn't get much better than that. Truly the "Rolls Royce" of two wheelers.

Things that will fit under the seat of a GT:
- Three bags of groceries
- Size large full face helmet along with a 17" macbook pro in a padded case
- Large and heavily padded leather jacket, sweatshirt, 17" MBP, and shoulder bag
- Two cases of size 6 diapers if you remove the inner bags from the cardboard