New BMW Scooter

Along with making outstanding cars, BMW is known for making great quality motorcycles. In the town where I live, there is a BMW Motorcycle dealership. As any readers I have out there know, I'm pretty keen on scooters. I find them easier to ride than a motorcycle and, they have more storage space. When I found out there was a BMW Motorcycle dealership where I live, I checked into whether BMW built any scooters. In my opinion, the scooter market is growing because they are a very affordable form of transportation and, they get great gas milage. A scooter isn't a far stretch from a motorcycle. The primary difference is in the transmission. A motorcycle has a standard i.e. clutch transmission while a scooter has an automatic transmission. Since it isn't that much of a stretch, I thought BWM might make a high quality scooter. I was wrong at that time. However, BMW just recently announced its Concept C (the C stands for commuter) scooter.

BMW's new scooter promises to bring even more competition in the high end scooter market. While BMW hasn't released the engine size for the new bike, they have stated that it "will be in the top range of the large scooter segment." In my book, that translates to between 500 and 650cc's. That big an engine should enable it to hold its own on any roads on there. With its BMW handling, it should give the motorcycle like Yamaha TMAX a run for its money.

The new bike promises some other features that will put it in a class of its own. The biggest being the doing away of rear view mirrors. Instead, the bike uses small television cameras that transmit their images to screens built into the instrument panel. The bike also has very stylish BLUE tires and LCD headlights.

All of these high tech features as well as the solid German engineering mean that this will be a very expensive scooter. As far as I know, BMW hasn't released any price information yet. I'm curious to see what one of these sleek high tech bikes will cost. Also, will BMW offer them in the U.S.? The biggest market for scooters is in scooter mad Europe. The new Concept C scooter will be built in Berlin, Germany. However, in my opinion, scooters are appearing more and more in the U.S. Yamaha felt there was enough of a market to bring their TMAX over from Europe. So, maybe if the Concept C proves a success in Europe, we may see it in the U.S. in time.