The Performance

In order to quantify the performance of the bikes, I had each rider rate each bike on a scale of one to five against each of 12 parameters. In the rating scale, five is best and one is worst. Thus for each scooterette I got 12 ratings per bike per rider. Since there were six bikes, I got a total of 12 x 6 = 72 ratings from each rider. The 12 parameters were : (1) Braking (2) Pick-up from zero to 30 kph (3) Acceleration from 30 to 60 kph (4) Climbing ability (5) Riding posture (6) Seat comfort (7) Suspension (8) RoadHolding (9) Handling (10) Electric switchgear ergonomics - placement and ease of operation (11) Headlight power and beam quality (12) Horn loudness and adequacy.

For the two four-strokers, Street and K4, I added one more parameter, i.e., Ease and smoothness of gear shifting. So for these two bikes I got one additional rating, i.e., 13 ratings from each rider. The maximum possible overall score a bike coud achieve would be 360 - that is, if one rider gave full five points to a bike on each of the 12 parameters, then that rider could give a maximum of (5 x 12 =) 60 points to a particular bike. Since there were / are six riders and if each rider gave full (5 x 12 =) 60 points to a particular bike, then that bike could get a maximum of (6 riders x 60 =) 360 points. Thus by totalling the points given by a rider against the 12 parameters for a bike, I would get that particular rider's overall rating for that bike out of a maximum possible total of 60 points. Adding the total (out of 60 points) of the same bike given by SIX different riders, would give me the overall score of that particular bike out of 360 (6 riders x 60).

Using the above formula, the six bikes achieved points out of 360 as given below :

The TVS Scooty is the clear winner by a wide margin. Followed by Street and K4 in that order, fairly close to each other. In fourth place is Pride again by a fairly wide margin. In fifth place is Trendy and Spirit in sixth (last) place is behind Trendy by a very wide margin.

Personally I would not like to include the Street and K4 in this category because as such they are NOT scooterettes but are totally different from the other four. For one, they have four-stroke engines while the other four have two-stroke engines. Secondly these two are geared while the others aren't. Thirdly Street and K4 have large diameter wheels (18 inch) while the others have smaller (10 inch) wheels.

The reason why Street and K4 are included here is purely situational. As mentioned earlier, mounting such an excercise is quite a big job - what with co-ordinating bikes, riders, schedules, routes and of course up front money = cash in advance!! Therefore, for the sake of convenience and costs I took along the Street and K4, and their ratings appear here purely because of financial and logistic constraints. I would be happy to do a separate - and much longer - shoot out between these two another time, as and when resources permit. This shoot-out was done in the first week of June 1999 and by right, this article should have been published in July 1999. The delay in publication is for reasons beyond my control. In the period between doing the shoot-out and publication, the market scenario has changed slightly.

For one, the Bajaj Spirit I used was an ungeared model, which I believe has since been discontinued and replaced with a two-speed automatic, oil immersed transmission. Thus I imagine that the exact version of the Spirit I used no longer exists. Even so, other accoutrements being same, out of the 12 parameters, only three, viz., Acceleration 0-30, Acceleration 30-60 and pulling power on climb, could be affected slightly. Therefore, I feel overall ranking would not change.

Secondly, after the shoot-out, the kick-start Kinetic Pride has been discontinued and is replaced by the self-start Kinetic STYLE which looks totally different. While I have not tested it yet, there seems to be at least one very significant technical difference between the two : While the literature of the old Pride mentions power as 4.5 BHP, the literature of the new Style mentions 4.0 BHP. I am really not sure which is which, but if there is really a difference of 0.5 BHP on the ground (which I doubt), then the results for the Kinetic Pride/Style could vary slightly - though I believe - not significantly and therefore again, overall ranking would not change.

Apart from the above overall rankings, this shoot-out has given me some more interesting data. By adding the points given by each rider to the same parameter of each bike, I can deduce the rating of each bike for each single parameter out of a total maximum 30 points (max. 5 points per parameter x SIX riders = 30), as per following table.

Here too, TVS Scooty is ahead of the others in 11 out of 12 parameters except in acceleration zero to 30 kph, where the Kinetic Pride is rated better. Thus on individual parameters too, TVS Scooty is far better than all the others by a wide margin again.

For the two four-strokers, Street and K4, I added one more parameter, i.e., Ease and smoothness of gear shifting. So for these two bikes I got one additional rating from each of six riders. The total for Street was 12 and for K4 was 20. Adding these figures to the totals of these two bikes in the above performance table, we get a total performance tally of 274 for Street and 270 for K4.

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