Millennials Not Buying Harleys  By  wheelbender6 (Read 1,748 times)

That's a personal opinion on the Vespa however when I was at the local multibrand dealer with the new Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Aprilia, Vespa, Piaggio and Eaton bikes all side by side in a row the Yamaha were not a clear winners nor were they twice the bike although they are nice bikes. The only twice I saw on the showroom floor looking at all those brands together at the same time was that you got almost twice the CC on the new Aprilia and some Piaggio models for the same price as the new Yamaha and Honda. Yes there are some TestaDura here who don't want to understand that you have to shop around and such but the deals are out there. I went shopping without any brand loyalty or bike bigotry ingrained and just shopped for best value and stumbled in during the Spring Factory Incentive Sale which if I had checked Piaggio's Web Site I would have known about in advance. No need to post MSRP lists as when you walk into a dealership those suggested prices are not carved in stone. Even a Lance or Sym for example has over a 30% margin on it ($800 to $900 markup) that can be reduced by the dealer if they want to go for profit on high volume sales.

I almost signed on a Honda CTXN 700 DCT during their Garage Sale Event last year since the loss leader was on sale new for $4,999 however the DCT then had hunting and pecking issues that still existed and was not as smooth as I would have preferred plus it had that brake pedal way up front that I really do not like along with a very low seating position which after a while on the test ride made it hard on my bad left knee supporting the bike. If there were only two of the three issues allowing me to more constantly use my right leg to balance the bike I probably would have penned my name on the bottom line. Like I said I am not a brand bigot and will consider anything that is on sale for a reasonable price and meets my requirements.

On Yamaha quality overall well I have helped enough people over the years with Yamaha Scooters and Motorcycles with a variety of issues that sometimes even makes the Chinese stuff from 2007 to 2009 look great and yes there were many issues that they caused themselves. Remember the Yamaha starters that would strip out every few thousand miles due to poor design, fairly recent Yamaha and Star models with factory exhausts that blocked oil filters from being changed without removal of the header pipes and requiring the replacement of frightfully expensive seals, etc, etc to call out just a few. On the old Yamaha Scooters its also quite a bit harder to find parts than on the old Piaggio unless its a Yamaha that the Chinese have cloned and kept the parts available for. None are perfect as they are contrivances of men.

People call scooters Vespa generically in Italy and many other parts of the world even when its a Chinese bike just like people here call most motor homes Winnebago's because they were the first with market presence. Its sad though that some people can still mess up a 100,000 mile plus capable Piaggio powered bike and trash it at relatively low mileage.

No need to post about the few that have messed up their bikes or bought one off Craigs List that somebody else already messed up and posted multiple times about it blaming everyone else on the planet for what they likely caused themselves or were cheated on by the previous owners selling the bikes to distance themselves from the problems they caused.