The Background

Today's requirements of Personalized Urban Transport in Indian cities has spawned a breed of two wheelers which is perfect for our kind of traffic. All of them two-strokers, small wheeled, step-thru, and in scooter trim. No frills, cheap to buy and cheap to maintain. Simple machinery, easy to ride - no matter what your size - body size or pocket size! Unless of course you are built like King Kong. But these will even take on King Kong if he insists. After all, who can resist King Kong if he insists?

The fore-runner of this genre was the very very basic Bajaj Sunny almost eight years ago. It looked puny, which it was. Yet as a novelty, it also looked attractive. Small sized pre-college babes went for it in. It was cheap. It was managable and manoeuvrable. It was simple to ride - no gears to change, no clutch to press. And it was definitely much more upmarket than the modern two wheeled cousin of the ancient two wheeled bullock cart - the bicycle, which these babes were hitherto riding.

Seeing these mobile nubiles, some aunty types also decided that this could be their moksha from bottom pinching bus crowds and pocket pinching autorixas. Until it came to climbing slopes, such as the famous Symbiosis slope in Pune's Harvard District, which this 50 cc Sunny just could not climb. Eyebrows were raised, explanations sought.

That was in 1991. At that time I had asked Bajaj Auto for a piece to do a ROAD TEST on. They had refused. Never mind. I had bought a new one from the market and done a thorough Road Test on the 50 cc Sunny right then which was published in 1991. I got the explanation : they were too heavy. I mean the aunties, not the Sunny. A 40 kilo nubile is fine, but a 65 kilo auntie was a nakko-nakko. The height of the Symbiosis slope is because of high academics, not high altitude, and if a Luna could do it, why not the Sunny? After all, 50 cc is 50 cc, isn't it?

Bajaj Sunny Zip

Aunties are a big market, so Bajaj Auto added 10 cc to the Sunny engine to give it Zip. It worked. Sometimes. Provided : weight of auntie x gradient of slope = 1. Just like they teach in Engineering College, that : Mechanical Advantage x Velocity Ratio =1.

Bajaj Spirit

Sunny and Zip notwithstanding, the concept caught on.

Thus came Kinetic's wide Pride, the runaway success TVS Scooty and the latest LML Trendy. Meanwhile the Sunny Zip itself was metamorphosizing. People were getting more demanding. Looks-wise, the Sunny was absolutely basic, and the competition (Scooty, Pride, Trendy) was getting ahead. So Bajaj decided to come out with a spirited response. Thus was born the Bajaj SPIRIT scooterette.

Scooty

Now there are four scooterettes. In a shoot-out among ungeared scooters that I had done almost five years ago, between KiHo (not Marvel), Pride, Sunny and Scooty, the Scooty had come out tops. These four bikes were miles apart in price, cc, BHP and other parameters, and what was sought to be determined was the VFM / Utility Index. (VFM = Value For Money).

Pride

KiHo was in a different class from the other three in all aspects except for one small (big?) technical similarity : It was gearless. Also, those were early days and the war of the scooterettes hadn't really begun.

LML Trendy

Today the scenario is different. People are more aware, more informed, thanks to all the AUTO magazines. Thanks to TV and the Internet. They want more VFM. More utility. Females, both nubile and not so nubile, want to be more and more mobile. And why not, when even phones are mobile now!! Five years ago there were no mobile phones. Social awareness has increased. A bike is not only a "gadha" taking you from point A to point B. It is also your personality statement. Looks matter tremendously. No matter if your scooterette performs like a "gadha", it can at least look like a "ghoda"!! In any case, the govt. is not exactly building racetrack quality roads on which a ghoda can run like a ghoda. So why pay the price of a ghoda when a gadha which looks like a ghoda can do the job in well enough style?

Background | The Bikes | The Riders | The Journey | The Performance | The Economics