One day, scooters will take over motorbikes

Scooters will succeed bikes as the planet's two-wheeler of choice

Why don't we love scooters? When I say 'we' I mean 'we' the British at large, 'we' the motorcycling fraternity and 'we' the poor, down-trodden working masses. I know I'm frothing about 'em after doing the Honda SH300i launch (page 9) but really, they are very handy and dead practical.

Let's take the SH as a case in point. Legendary freelancer Chris Moss and I had a whale of a time on this little machine. It reawakened us as to just how capable a big-bore scooter could be on twisty roads, autoroutes and in town centres. Hell, we even stuffed a helmet-less cool as FCUK local Sicilian on a Z1000. Yes, a scooter can provide that much fun.

Little wonder that more than 350,000 of the SH family have been sold since the first SH50 of 1984. That makes it the Harry Potter of scootering. They simply sell and sell, year after year, and with every new edition comes more sales. In fact, the SH series is a bit of a cult across the rest of Europe, Italy especially.

Now here's the interesting bit. Honda launched the bike in Sicily and we were told that 30,000 of the machines would probably make their way to that country in 2007. Next up will be Spain, with perhaps around 10,000 earmarked for them and only 300 - yes, you read that right,  just 300 - coming to the UK and France each.

What is it with our metropolis dwellers? Can we not see the advantages of our own, lithe, nimble personal transport? Freeing us from the shackles of antiquated and under-funded public transport?

Back in the mists of time, TWO was a motorcycle and scooter magazine. We had a fleet of scooters as well as the latest hyper-bikes. Every evening when we left the TWO palace of pain and headed back to our frugal accommodation, do you know what we each took?

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