BW's : started a new scooter boom
The first one was BW's 50 (or Booster 50 for MBK). This little 50 cc scooter, introduced in 1988 revolutionized the scooter market.

It fulfilled several desires:

• It was completely different from existing scooters, with a radical new tough looks
• It had fully automatic transmission
• It was perfect for city use with it's rugged offroad layout

Let's consider an analogy with mobile phones: they started as just a fashionable gadget for rich professionals, and then became widespread among a wider population as soon as the cellular technology allowed a very compact, miniaturized size and a very user-friendly operation.

These technological innovations did become successful as they are backed and supported by the major societal trends: they perfectly interpret, fulfil and match a pre-existing socio-cultural mood.

With a very appealing hi-tech, hi-touch image, these products enable people to feel more autonomous and independent from the constraints of modern society, to combine duty and pleasure, to fight the boredom of everyday life routine, to save and master their time in a more efficient and rewarding way, to be more flexible and virtually present anywhere at anytime.

But nowadays these markets are maturing, becoming more selective and sophisticated, and the competition is becoming tougher and tougher; it is crucial to forecast the development of these markets in parallel with the development on societal trends.

Future: Room for new concepts
Nowadays nobody will doubt that scooters are one of the interesting markets to cope with: They have a deep link with socio-cultural mood and fashion trends, and customer are really willing to consider and get new benefits by new features and technologies. As a consequence for us, there is room for new concepts and new aesthetics.

As two wheeler manufacturer, we obviously care about the future of scooters as well as future of society. In many European countries today more and more customers are realizing the advantages of the scooter against a car, both in terms of functionality and in terms of image.

The scooter world is constantly enlarging the range of indented usage, and already today it is one of private means of transportation which offers the least limitations in personal mobility.

Yamaha Group has been a pioneer in understanding deeply societal trends and customer lifestyle developments.

Majesty: new world of Maxi Scooter
No wonder that Majesty in 1996 was the second milestone from Yamaha to change the scooter world. This first maxi scooter with fully automatic transmission and high performance was extremely successful as a combination of commuter and fun vehicle. It took the hearts of the Italian scooter fans by storm and sold in ten-thousands of units every year since.

T-Max: fades the border between scooter and motorcycle
T-Max in 2001 was the third milestone: this scooter combines the performance of a middle class motorcycle with the comfort of a scooter.

With T-Max you can survive in the every day routine and escape it at the same time; you do not need to be an expert and you get a lot of fun; you can enjoy comfort and relaxation as well as performance and riding pleasure.

T-Max is a good example for a mix of new technology: motorcycle elements never used before on a scooter allow our customer to reach a new, undiscovered cocktail of emotions and functions on a two wheeler.Scooters have become symbols of an independent lifestyle, helping our customers to blur boundaries between working time and leisure time.

Soon: Scooters will become more sophisticated
As far as the future is concerned, the offer is multiplying in terms of variety of styling, scooter customer expectations are constantly increasing and getting more sophisticated and challenging for us.

Just as we know we have set a new leading edge so far, we firmly believe that future scooters have lots of potential, as many goals look still possible: better safety and comfort, more protection, cleaner and smoother engines, etc.

That's why, even in the future, Yamaha wants to keep on answering to the customer not only by better designs, but also thinking and conceiving innovative and breakthrough solutions and technologies to fulfill the more and more sophisticated needs.

Stay tuned!