Support Your Local Scooter Shop

July 14th, 2009 - Scooters are a very unique mode of transportation; widely different from most modern motorcycles. Consequently, many motorcycle shops that carry scooters lack the knowledge and/or passion necessary to provide the best buying experience. While there are motorcycle shops that are knowledgeable about scooters, they are few and far between. On the other hand, every scooter specific shop we've had the pleasure of visiting has been passionate and knowledgeable about scooters. In their cases they have to be, it's their core business.

A shining example of what a great scooter shop should be is Scenic City Scooters in Chattanooga, TN. They combine the three most important ingredients for a successful scooter shop, great brands (Genuine and KYMCO), a top notch mechanic (Stan Obel), and a wonderful staff. Those three ingredients sum up the huge benefit of doing business with a scooter specific shop. You get a knowledgeable staff who knows the product, wonderful mechanical support, and well as the fact that you are supporting a local establishment that gives back to the scootering community.

On the flip side, while we've never had a bad scooter experience in a motorcycle focused shop, our experiences have never been quite as good as a scooter-centric shop. The motorcycle focused shops definitely don't have the knowledge of the scooter shops, and the passion is normally not as high. Our recent experience trying to secure a test drive of some new scooter models at a local Honda/Yamaha motorcycle dealership backed up our position.

We tried to secure a test drive of a new Yamaha Zuma 125 and a Honda SH150i. Even though both Yamaha and Honda had test drive programs for the respective models at this location, the dealership refused our request. Their response was that they "couldn't allow the test drive because if they prepped the bikes for a test drive, the carbs and jets would become clogged after the bikes sat on the floor for a few weeks before selling." It seems as this experience confirms our initial statement that in general, motorcycle shops lack general scooter knowledge. As most of you know that the Zuma 125 and SH150i are both fuel injected. This means there are no carburetors to gum up on these models. We can totally understand a dealership not wanting a journalist to kick the tires of a bike they are selling but uneducated excuses are unacceptable. A response of "sorry but we don't want to accumulate additional mileage on the scooters" would have made sense to us and been perfectly understandable.

Basically it all boils down to supporting those who support the scootering scene. Scooter shops have the knowledge, passion, and desire to support and grow the local scootering community. While motorcycle focused shops aren't necessarily doing anything bad to the scootering community, they're definitely not doing as much as the scooter-only shops. My grandfather always said " do business with those who do business with you." For most scooterists that is without a doubt the scooter shop.

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