Where did all the mopeds and scooters go?
Discussion
Twenty years ago, they were a common sight on the roads but musing to myself the other day, I hardly see them anymore. Depending on your view, this maybe a good thing, but don't 16 year olds want the freedom any more and happy to continue with public transport?
Edited by Starjet99 on Saturday 18th April 12:16
15 years since I had my Aprilia sr50 and absolutely loved the freedom it gave me.
Still see a few around but mostly 17 year olds on 125 bikes now
I'm all for them enjoying a bike but some of them are horrendously loud
Still see a few around but mostly 17 year olds on 125 bikes now
Drive it fix it repeat said:
Think the fake motorbike is the weapon of choice now. Not sure what elastic band powers them 125 maybe. f
king hateful things that make an un holy racket.
king hateful things that make an un holy racket. I'm all for them enjoying a bike but some of them are horrendously loud
Edited by iacabu on Sunday 5th April 13:43
mad4amanda said:
But that's not a moped , a sixteener special. Thats a 125 they are fine its mopeds we were discussing.
ooops, ok.I don't see many 50cc jobs at the station car park.
I guess they'll get even rarer now that some of these elec scooters can do 16mph plus and need zero insurance.
iacabu said:
15 years since I had my Aprilia sr50 and absolutely loved the freedom it gave me.
Still see a few around but mostly 17 year olds on 125 bikes now
I'm all for them enjoying a bike but some of them are horrendously loud
21 years since my SR125 (Tetsuya Harada rep). I was aiming for a SR50 for my 15 mile each way to commute to college, but the dealer said I'd be much better off doing the CBT and getting the 125 and actually having some poke to get out of trouble. Got me into biking did that! Still see a few around but mostly 17 year olds on 125 bikes now
Drive it fix it repeat said:
Think the fake motorbike is the weapon of choice now. Not sure what elastic band powers them 125 maybe. fking hateful things that make an un holy racket.
king hateful things that make an un holy racket. I'm all for them enjoying a bike but some of them are horrendously loud
Edited by iacabu on Sunday 5th April 13:43
triumph-ant said:
The licence requirements changed in 2001 so that you couldn't ride a moped on a car licence without doing a CBT. Of course, once you did a CBT, you could ride a 125cc.
Even after 2001.. In the mid-noughties they were everywhere.I got my 50cc scooter when I was 16 in 2006 to get to and from college, met a dozen or more other lads also had 50cc scooters / mopeds and we were always out on them just going on rides for fun (they were all modified so realistically the scooters would do ~50 and the geared bikes ~60).
Rarely see any these days, maybe in London etc..
From listening to the apprentices in my office, none of them seem interested, I think they're all saving for their first lease deposits to get into the newest car they can when they pass their tests..
Was reading a report on this in a trade magazine last night, your quite correct.
Appears not one simple answer, only a decade ago mopeds sales used to account for 15-20% of all new annual bike sales in the UK.
2019 it was just 5% ( with roughly the same 95-100,000 new bike (or PTW Powered Two Wheeler) annual sales.
Seems solely not one reason but various factors, parents are more risk averse now, insurance costs are huge for a 16 year old, bad press from all the moped thefts/gangs, youngsters staying in education longer and going straight to a car after university etc....and pedlec sales, why pay for fuel, insurance, gear etc when you can have an electric bike with none of the running costs.
In other countries, moped sales account for 30-40% of the annual sales figures, Italy was one of the those counties, with a better climate , easier laws/insurance, they make more sense.
Steve Parrish also discussed this with a group of us a few months back, his daughter had a moped at 16 and was telling us lots of people criticised him for putting her in danger by doing just that....having done the same with my daughter at 16, I too had pressure and comment from various family members....Socially were not the same country we was 10-20 years ago, motorcycling is becoming more and more niche.
Appears not one simple answer, only a decade ago mopeds sales used to account for 15-20% of all new annual bike sales in the UK.
2019 it was just 5% ( with roughly the same 95-100,000 new bike (or PTW Powered Two Wheeler) annual sales.
Seems solely not one reason but various factors, parents are more risk averse now, insurance costs are huge for a 16 year old, bad press from all the moped thefts/gangs, youngsters staying in education longer and going straight to a car after university etc....and pedlec sales, why pay for fuel, insurance, gear etc when you can have an electric bike with none of the running costs.
In other countries, moped sales account for 30-40% of the annual sales figures, Italy was one of the those counties, with a better climate , easier laws/insurance, they make more sense.
Steve Parrish also discussed this with a group of us a few months back, his daughter had a moped at 16 and was telling us lots of people criticised him for putting her in danger by doing just that....having done the same with my daughter at 16, I too had pressure and comment from various family members....Socially were not the same country we was 10-20 years ago, motorcycling is becoming more and more niche.
Cue Hovis music; Ee when I were a lad.....
The older 5th years had AR50's; FS1E's or BWizzes (BWS?) before I left school, and were always pinging about - I desperately wanted one but then started my apprenticeship straight after leaving school in the June; getting a car within a month and passing my car test in the December - a bit of snow that year stopped my want for a bike; my mates both had slight mishaps on their DT and TS 50's at skiddy junctions
The AR50's with 80 top ends; CDI upgrades and Allspeeds (do I remember 6th gear conversions??) were still pinging around; the TS50's became 80's after a weekend messing about and the DT's were rightly binned in favour of RG125's and KR1S's - if you had money a 7 speed Cagiva Mito even!
I stuck with my Mk1 Fiesta until my Direct Access got me on my 1st VFR NC30.
The older 5th years had AR50's; FS1E's or BWizzes (BWS?) before I left school, and were always pinging about - I desperately wanted one but then started my apprenticeship straight after leaving school in the June; getting a car within a month and passing my car test in the December - a bit of snow that year stopped my want for a bike; my mates both had slight mishaps on their DT and TS 50's at skiddy junctions
The AR50's with 80 top ends; CDI upgrades and Allspeeds (do I remember 6th gear conversions??) were still pinging around; the TS50's became 80's after a weekend messing about and the DT's were rightly binned in favour of RG125's and KR1S's - if you had money a 7 speed Cagiva Mito even!
I stuck with my Mk1 Fiesta until my Direct Access got me on my 1st VFR NC30.
I remember doing CBT day after my 16th birthday, my Dad turned up at the centre on my 'ped that we'd done up together in the months prior and I wobbled home on it. Later that day or next about 5-6 of my mates turned up on theirs - AR50s, DT50s, weird stuff like Tomos or Kreidlers - and off we went in a cloud of 2T in the general direction of wherever we thought girls or a chip shop might be.
These days as others have said the focus is on getting into a car, possibly with some kind of finance making this look even easier. Even when the crowd I ran with started drifting towards cars at 17 or 18 nobody could afford anything much better than a £400 1300cc Escort Popular Plus, car running costs were exorbitant compared to bikes and you could go a lot faster on a derestricted NSR125 so it took a big crash before I eventually got my car license (my girlfriend at the time was going to walk if I didn't!) Today an 18 year old might be able to get into a fairly high performance small car, new or nearly new. Nobody had access to that 'in my day' and if we did probably wouldn't have lingered on bikes so long.
These days as others have said the focus is on getting into a car, possibly with some kind of finance making this look even easier. Even when the crowd I ran with started drifting towards cars at 17 or 18 nobody could afford anything much better than a £400 1300cc Escort Popular Plus, car running costs were exorbitant compared to bikes and you could go a lot faster on a derestricted NSR125 so it took a big crash before I eventually got my car license (my girlfriend at the time was going to walk if I didn't!) Today an 18 year old might be able to get into a fairly high performance small car, new or nearly new. Nobody had access to that 'in my day' and if we did probably wouldn't have lingered on bikes so long.
Pope said:
Cue Hovis music; Ee when I were a lad.....
The older 5th years had AR50's; FS1E's or BWizzes (BWS?) before I left school, and were always pinging about - I desperately wanted one but then started my apprenticeship straight after leaving school in the June; getting a car within a month and passing my car test in the December - a bit of snow that year stopped my want for a bike; my mates both had slight mishaps on their DT and TS 50's at skiddy junctions
The AR50's with 80 top ends; CDI upgrades and Allspeeds (do I remember 6th gear conversions??) were still pinging around; the TS50's became 80's after a weekend messing about and the DT's were rightly binned in favour of RG125's and KR1S's - if you had money a 7 speed Cagiva Mito even!
I stuck with my Mk1 Fiesta until my Direct Access got me on my 1st VFR NC30.
The good old days, I bought my AR50 in 1989 and literally went to the blokes house, paid him then rode it home-i just scraped in before the CBT. It was amazing, I didn't have a clue-tried leaving in in 5th up the first hill I came to and when it ground to a halt I kicked it back down to 1st and started again. It had an 80cc top end, my mate had a 93cc kit on his. I got an AR80 carb which improved it a lot, on a good day it would do 61mph. The AR80 bottom end had the 6 speed box, but I never had that..The older 5th years had AR50's; FS1E's or BWizzes (BWS?) before I left school, and were always pinging about - I desperately wanted one but then started my apprenticeship straight after leaving school in the June; getting a car within a month and passing my car test in the December - a bit of snow that year stopped my want for a bike; my mates both had slight mishaps on their DT and TS 50's at skiddy junctions
The AR50's with 80 top ends; CDI upgrades and Allspeeds (do I remember 6th gear conversions??) were still pinging around; the TS50's became 80's after a weekend messing about and the DT's were rightly binned in favour of RG125's and KR1S's - if you had money a 7 speed Cagiva Mito even!
I stuck with my Mk1 Fiesta until my Direct Access got me on my 1st VFR NC30.
My buddies and I had such fun on them, I loved being able to go anywhere, I felt cool AF riding it to school and evenings and weekends were spent racing everywhere, trying to wheelie them, and the odd spill..
I just loved having a real engine and gearbox after years of bicycles, it was unreal.
You just don't see them now, only auto scooter things and not really in any number, and seemingly ridden by scallys, but I guess people probably thought the same about us..
S2r said:
The kid bought his 50cc a couple of months ago and is so frustrated that he can't ride it...
And a couple of kids at his school have 50s as well ones so they're still out there - he's thinking about a 125 and I'm trying to steer him towards something a bit older and 2 stroke
That is a 50?And a couple of kids at his school have 50s as well ones so they're still out there - he's thinking about a 125 and I'm trying to steer him towards something a bit older and 2 stroke
Farkin'ell, I would have died for that when I was 16!
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