How can we be so arrogant (towards the Chinese)?  By  prodigit (Read 13,134 times)

My two cents, is not worth a lot, but whether we ride a Chinese scooter or Jap scooter- some other country is collecting our money. It does not matter to Harley riders- they all wave at me while I ride my Chinese scooter with pride. China builds parts for Harley too. It is not that we are siding with the Cummunist, but more saying, business is business and we know a good deal when we see it. Most people that buy Chinese also can't afford the steeper prices of competitors.

Well, you're right there! Only, there are no <$1k taiwanese deals out there!

And there is why most people shy the Taiwanese models!
It's all based on super deals, or hard finds of people getting rid of perfectly good material, and sell it at a ridiculously low price, because they don't know what the product is worth; giving deals you can only get once in a lifetime.
Those chinese scoots are sold all over. There are no taiwanese scoot or motorcycle dealers in Miami, and very few in Florida.

I'm not counting christmas sales, or second hand sales here. Might as well buy a $1500 second hand car for that price! lots more options than your Taiwanese scoot!

All I'm saying is, that aside for these scoots to be inaccessible to me, they go for just the same high pricepoint as Japanese bikes (namely 2,5-4x the price of a Chinese new bike.

Cuz if you start with second hand, you can find lots of working chinese scoots for under $300, second hand, too. Gonna beat that price with a second hand Kymco?

Not quite true as usual

www.kymcousa.com/dealers/index.aspx Looks like there are 7 within 100 miles of Miami and 1 in Miami for Kymco

Sym only has 5 though alliancepowersports.com/find_dealer/

Sym has factory incentives right now that make their bikes quite affordable Kymco Like 200i's are always less than $3k...

There you go spreading misinformation again. I walked into the Chinese clone shops local to me and didn't just look at the price tags but asked for hard quotes and real prices so what I posted is what I was quoted as the real hard local prices not counting tax and title from several brick and mortor local Chinese Clone dealers in the Tampa Bay Florida area.

I walked into the Aprilia dealer on a lark to see for myself if it was just snootiness or if there was any real value to paying $5,000 plus for an Italian bike as some folks here had mislead me to believe was the real world price. First thing that I found was that the Italian bikes were heavily discounted and only selling for a few hundred dollars more than the Chinese equivalents and that banks would offer 4 or 5 year financing on them with the dealers even offering 0% financing with $0 down which is much better compared to the Clone Dealers only offering to take credit cards and no bank or credit union offering a secured loan on a Chinese bike.

At that $5,000 + price that everyone had been telling me about I found that I could have gotten an 850cc Aprilia Sport bike with a hybrid multimode automatic/manual transmission. Even the Aprilia Scarabeo 500cc scooter was just $3,999 plus tax, title and state/county fees.

The bottom line was while I could not afford the cost of purchasing a Chinese bike I could in my budget afford the Aprillia which comparatively the monthly payment costs me less than many here pay for their monthly cable tv or cell phone bills.

How may here tried to save money buying a Chinese bike on-line using a credit card and then had to further burden that card with the extra repairs and setup costs then to be only able to make the minimum payments for many years to scrape by when they could have bought an Aprillia on a fixed term 3 or 4 year loan for less money in the long run.

In the Real World where I live the Chinese Clone scooter still required Tax, Title, etc just like the Aprilia so when the smoke cleared it was still just a $200 to $300 final price difference. Factor a 20% to 30% credit card on the Chinese Clone purchase compared to 0% to 3.5% dealer financing and the savings from buying a Chinese Clone locally evaporates and then swings in the other direction with the locally purchased Chinese bike in the final analysis costing much more than the Aprilia.

As for common knowledge that everyone knows, that was debunked as just misinformation the moment I walked into a number of local Chinese Clone dealerships and read the price tags and got written price quotes on the bikes I was looking at. Some were quoting almost $3,000 for a Znen 150 which I passed off as just a local rip-off artist and did not bother to mention before as real street prices since they were so obviously over inflated.

These are the personally verified facts that I learned from actually visiting Clone and Mainstream dealerships locally and working out the numbers in person face to face with the managment.

No I'm saying he could have easily shown us his claims on the video, how hard is it to video a bearing with one inch of slack? Remember two sides of the coin. Again we know nothing of the rider, his mechanical skills, how he has treated the scooter, even if he has done any PM? Most people change the oils at least at the 500 mile mark, which even in the bad Chinese manuals is recommended, so would not any responsible owner have seen that the rear axle had trouble or possibly no oil?

If he did then he just kept riding it? See that's just an assumption on my part just as his video is not supported by anything other than this is dangerous and has the POC telling you to not ride these scooters.

If the scooter was so bad and so dangerous then he could have done this video in his shop, supported all his claims with actual evidence on the video and also told us what the conditions were, His only comment on the rider was he wasn't too heavy. One can say anything on a video but if I were making these claims and they were in fact true I would show you the evidence and leave no doubt.

You want to believe him, your choice and right, me I see a video aimed at getting you to his dealership, nothing more. Show me the bad bearings, no oil in the tranny, bad seal that was caused by a bent shaft and then I'll say this was a real problem.

BTW I also have a 150 the Bali, it's a lot heavier than that 150 and it has 4700 miles on it, no bent shaft, no bad steering bearings, no charging problems and still has the OEM tires on it even though they do need replacing now and it has the same exact engine as this poor scooter in the video.

I weigh 250lbs and have rode it in 100F + temps and it has never had these troubles. Why? Because I take care of it. I also can put that on a video with no trouble too.

Is he laying? Don't know and he also could have videoed the speedo with just 600 miles, he did not. IMO just a sales pitch and he didn't support his claims to make it any different IMO.

JR

I'd rather buy a cheap china made scoot. its a hobby to take them apart, if i bought something that didn't need maintenance all my fun would be gone. I bought three china scoots this summer pulled the motors out under 5 miles. China scoots become quality after you replace the parts with quality stuff, even after replacing the motor, cvt componets, lines and screws they are still cheaper than a honda, zuma or vespa. I'd rather have a cheap china scoot that has quality parts installed by me, than a used name brand bike that would still cost me more than the new china bike.

Here's the thing Millsc, if you do the mods yourself you know EXACTLY what went in and how well the work was done. REALITY, not just some high priced sales spiel.