Modern Vespa

Sort of like saying everything you know about hamburgers comes from eating the dollar burger at Arby's for 15 years. "There are companies that use actual meat?"

to be fair to Arby's they said "we have the meats" not "we have the beefs".

but point well made

I was going to suggest subbing "Arby's" with "White Castle", but we might need to validate that with Birdsnest and Poidog.

Or Krystal, I have experience with them. Loosest interpretation of "hamburger" that I've experienced to date.

I don't think Europe has anything to do with it. More likely other things including extra compression.

Sorry, that doesn't even pass the blush test. Being unaware of the quality issues with Chinese scooters after 15 years isn't even remotely believable.

I think you've just stepped off the credibility cliff.

now this may come as a shock to you, but there are people out there who will gladly eschew evidence both empirical and anecdotal as well as common sense for a paycheck...

nope

Credibility? Behold my first motorcycle, a 1958 Sears Allstate Moped by Puch with a two speed handshift transmission. The bike I finished third on in street lightweight field trials in 1968. The bike I started riding and shifting in 1962.



I took possession of the Bashan 150 after my late wife refused to ride any longer after learning how to ride and shift a Honda CR-60 minicrosser in ten minutes and bought herself a Honda Rebel. The scooter was three weeks old.

Before that I had a 1974 Kawasaki H1500e, a 1979 Kawasaki 1000st for 125,000 miles and a 2000 Kawasaki W650. In addition to a few dirt bikes I raced.

In an effort to learn about Chinese scooters I joined Scootdawg in 2008. I learned about this forum when somebody on SD linked a thread here tearing apart Chinese scooters. Let's just say the replies there were as "Interesting" as the replies on this forum.

Who am I. Only a 59 year member of the AMA. I learned why you didn't buy a 1960s British motorcycle handing Dad wrenches in his shop. My first new bike, the 500 triple, required bolt tightening every three months? Did you know the right hand cylinder would mysteriously kill spark plugs every three months even though they came out dry but had cracked insulators? That changing the rear shocks to Boge Mulholland units made them the scourge of Yamaha RD350s?

I learned motorcycling at the feet of WWII Vets who knew every nut and bolt on their bikes. That every motorcycle talks to you, all you have to do is listen and take care of it. It's allowed me to get reliable life out of all my stuff stuff as a result. As somebody once said to me at Scooterdoc, "You're the kind of guy who hears his pistons going up and down in the cylinders."

After 61 total years of riding and fixing I don't say stuff for the paycheck. I don't have to. I also don't dance around the truth. I don't have to. Bikes are only as good as their owners. At least that's what the people I grew up motorcycling with taught me.

your credibility has nothing to do with your so called bonafides. yeah, yeah, you've been riding since Jesus was a private and part of the AMA longer than King Arthur Flour. big whoop.

by all accounts you don't own a vespa, have no intentions of owning a vespa and don't particularly care for vespas one way or another; yet you come to a place that is passionately dedicated to vespa only to stan for basically what is the anthesis of vespa. oh, and post of links to sites that are just disseminating already known information, generally about other makes and models.

I too have studied at the feet of the masters, overthrown governments, wooed women and ridden to the moon and back. but you don't see me logging onto a vintage car forum to tell people there about how great the 2023 Corolla is or how I got the greatest deal on my 2009 Civic and it's never left me at the side of the road.

there is, however, one key difference: I've worked on an absolute metric ass ton of Chinese scooters. and I can tell you, to a one, they are all some level of utter dog shit. there is only bad and variations of worse with them.

anyway, my point is that your whole modus operandi is akin to somebody walking into a nice Italian restaurant and proclaiming that the food stinks and it's over priced while talking up the diner down the street as you hand out menus to the people dining.

to borrow a line from the yoots, it really just comes off as thirsty.

credibility I'm posting the definition of "credibility" here because you seem confused about what it means. It doesn't mean the things you have accomplished, or the bikes you have ridden, or the forums and organizations you have been a member of. It's about whether what you say is believable.

And when you say things like "I've been doing this scooter thing for fifteen years and this is news to me", it's just not credible or believable.

But this is all academic, because honestly, I don't care. You can go on believing whatever you want about Chinese bikes. You might even eventually be right, when the state-owned manufacturers finally figure out that they are prioritizing the wrong aspects of manufacturing. But today they are not, and your suggestion that you are unaware of this fact is not credible or believable.

I am aware that your agenda here is to prove us all wrong and defend the honor of Chinese-made scooters, or something along those lines. You've said as much yourself in your previous post (though not in so many words). I'm not accusing you of being a paid shill, but you are most definitely acting as a shill, regardless of whether you're being paid for it (or not).

So knock it off. Seriously. This is a Vespa forum. I don't care one bit about whether Chinese bikes are worthwhile or not, and your feigned ignorance on the subject is annoying at best and completely dishonest at worst.

If you actually need help with a Vespa or even with any other scooter or motorcycle, the community here will try and help you. That's what we're here for.

If, on the other hand, you're just here to convince us that Chinese bikes are not the shit that we know them to be, then I would like to politely remind you that we're not interested in the proselytization.

And if you still persist, then I'll politely show you the exit.

I hope that's clear.

This post definitely deserves the funniest post of all time award...

Chapeau

nope

I remember Steve Jobs speaking about the CEO of Sony once.

At that time, Japan was known for cheap quality bad products, and the CEO of Sony said that he didn't want just Sony to be known for high quality products - he wanted to set the bar so high that Japan became known for high quality products.

I do wonder if we'll see this with China within the next decade or so.

For me personally, it seems extremely "hit and miss". I've bought some Chinese products and wanted to put them in the bin immediately, and others have been of a phenomenal quality and technology - like how DJI cameras and drones have managed to take on Go Pro and have arguably moved ahead of them now.

I've heard this a lot, usually when someone brings up just how crappy Chinese products are. Here's what really happened:

In 1960, Hayato Ikeda was elected Prime Minister of Japan on a promise to double the GDP and personal income of Japanese citizens in 10 years. At the time, Japan was primarily known for textile production, and their car and truck industry was nothing to brag about. One of the paths Ikeda laid out to achieve this goal, was to focus on the manufacture and export of world class heavy machinery, ships and automobiles. (Side note- much of the first precision machinery Japan relied on for manufacturing during this period was from the UK.) By 1967, the goals of the 10 year plan to double GDP and personal income was achieved and all through the 1970's, Japan was well on it's way to being one of the economic superpowers of the later 20th century, largely because of the quality of what they produced. When Japanese cars started showing up in the US in big numbers, people realized right away that they were much more reliable and affordable than the cars coming out of Detroit or Europe at the time. As for Japanese motorcycles, the 700cc Honda Nighthawk is the poster child for what American Government and Industry thought of the quality of Japanese motorcycles.
So unless Mr. Jobs was referring to the years immediately after WW2, that ship had long sailed, and there is nothing about the way Japan rose to economic dominance that is even remotely close to China's path.
Japan got to be Japan, Inc by paying highly skilled workers extremely well to make the best possible products they could. China seems bent on getting there by doing the exact opposite on a much greater scale.