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Which Little Auto Is Best?


eljeque

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My friend needs to get a small auto for his little one.

She can ride a Wave, auto clutch, but she is not the largest of youg women, and would like one of the smaller autos.

So, which one is it?

Fino, Mio, Click, Icon, etc?

Advantages and disadvantages of each.

The bike will be bought new.

What do you think?

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Fino/Mio was revised about a year ago; I mean a serious revision not new plastics and lights. Call it Mio2. Engines in these are really smooth and because there are so many of them about servicing and spares won't be a problem. I also notice the newer model is more frugal with fuel.

Anyone know what the difference between a Click and an Icon is, because the Icon is much cheaper?

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Hi there. I have driven recently a brandnew Honda Wave(autoclutch) , Yamaha Nuovo MX (auto) and own a new Fino-for wife (auto)....i must say the Fino is the nicest ride of them all. Very comfortable, enough power, and that thing did yesterday 115km/h ! This is not gps verified but i am quite convinced that the Fino does give good speed.

Being a bit big guy i look ridiculous on it ....perfect for wife though:-)

mbox

Edited by mbox
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I have had many bikes. (my wife rents them out)

I have got rid of all Mio now, too much maintenance.

Buying only click now.

The Fino is basically a Mio with other plastic parts.

But your Wife probably want to have the pink Fino with a lot of mirrors and Chrome. :)

Edited by PoorSucker
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My friend needs to get a small auto for his little one.

She can ride a Wave, auto clutch, but she is not the largest of youg women, and would like one of the smaller autos.

So, which one is it?

Fino, Mio, Click, Icon, etc?

Advantages and disadvantages of each.

The bike will be bought new.

What do you think?

The icon is the one ..it has a narrower seat than the Click..The Icon is lower as well so even my wife can get here feet down/leg over!lol

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I have had many bikes. (my wife rents them out)

I have got rid of all Mio now, too much maintenance.

Buying only click now.

The Fino is basically a Mio with other plastic parts.

But your Wife probably want to have the pink Fino with a lot of mirrors and Chrome. :)

The Fino is a nightmare for pillion riders if they have small legs as they stick out sideways as the seat is so wide..No good for small ladies with short legs as well...

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Buying a scooter/motorcycle below 250cc you need to think about 3 things...

1)What is my budget....

2)What is the latest new model, and is it a technology enhancement...

3)What brand is it and do I live near a dealer....

For small full-automatic transmission motorcycles or scooters my selection would be Suzuki, Honda, …......, …......, Yamaha.

On Automatic scooters this will translate into...

1) Suzuki Skydrive 125, or Jelato 125

2) Honda Click-i, or Airblade-i

5) Yamaha Nouvo MX, Nouvo Elegance

But not get me wrong, if I would live near a Honda dealer, and the Suzuki dealer would be serious be a few extra kilometers I would go for a Honda... To currently select a Yamaha over a Honda or Suzuki the kilometers to a Honda or Suzuki dealer need to be seriously in the 10 times numbers..

Edited by Richard-BKK
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I had problems with the click-i in traffic, mirrors are spaced to wide. Of course you could loosen them and move them around while weaving through traffic though.

Agreed, have the Click-I, which I purhcased new, and am always having the same problem with the mirrors while weaving through traffic. Bike handles well, great on gas.

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HAD EM ALL. There are no bad ones. Just economics , ergonomics and personal choice should dictate your choice. Susi is usually the cheapest little 125 around and will blow the doors off the others due to it's weight and 15cc advantage. Thing is cheap to run. Miser on petrol. Add 10,000baht for the watercooled Honda , bigger rubber and the extra rear shock

russ

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HAD EM ALL. There are no bad ones. Just economics , ergonomics and personal choice should dictate your choice. Susi is usually the cheapest little 125 around and will blow the doors off the others due to it's weight and 15cc advantage. Thing is cheap to run. Miser on petrol. Add 10,000baht for the watercooled Honda , bigger rubber and the extra rear shock

russ

It will blow the doors off the others and has a 15 c.c. advantage? You are saying the Yamaha Nouvo Elegance is a 110 c.c. then? And much slower than the Suzuki 125, which is what one means by "blowing the doors off of"? Here's the specs I've found on the Suzuki Skydrive Suzuki specs

Yamaha Nouvo specs

http://rmreview.com.my/yamaha-lc-135-the-m...lest-bike-ever/

Yamaha Spark and its equivalents specs for Yamaha Spark and its equivalents

Wikipedia 135 c.c. Spark specifications

Honda Wave specifications

My take is as follows. Yamaha's been the real pioneer when it comes to the automatics. Now when a source such as Wikipedia claims a bike has 6.5 horsepower KW I'm thinking kilowatts. When it claims 11.2 horsepower or 11.33 horsepower P.S. I'm still not sure what the figure means. There's horsepower at the rear wheel and horsepower developed at the engine. I'm not a motorcycle or automobile engineer or mechanic. However I would think P.S. can be used to compare one bike to another relatively. For instance, the 113 c.c. Yamaha air cooled Nouvo is rated by Wikipedia at 8.9 horsepower P.S. whereas the larger 125 c.c. Honda Wave is rated at 9.3 horsepower P.S. for its carburetor version of its 125 c.c. engine whereas its fuel injected model develops just 9.18 horsepower while developing a micro tad less torque. The Yamaha 135 c.c. Nouvo Elegance is rated at 11.2 horsepower. P.S. which is substantially more than either the Nouvo MX 113 c.c. model or the Honda Wave. I can't seem to find anything other than the basic specs for the Suzuki 125 c.c. Skydrive.

One of my sources claims over 160 kilometers per hour for the Yamaha Spark. I'm not sure where it got this B.S. from. Do note that the Yamaha Spark is rated at just 11.33 P.S. which is about 1/10th horsepower more than the automatic Nouvo Elegance is developing. And this seems to be with fuel injection. Now I don't know what is going to happen at the drag strip but it does seem that Yamaha is doing quite well in the horsepower game with its Nouvo models compared to the competition and even its 135 c.c. fuel injected counterparts and that the Elegance 135 c.c. is king of the hill by a long shot with competitive companies playing catch up. It will be most interesting to see if the 150 cc. fuel injected Honda automatics make it to Thailand or not. I'm betting they will and soon. As for the U.S. versions being priced at over $4000 whether they are made in Italy or Spain, this bike if it makes it to the Thai market will undoubtedly be made in Thailand at a much lower labor cost.

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The Nouvo has a carb (vs FI for I believe all of the newest Hondas). If I'm in the boonies and something happens to the fuel system I'd rather have the carb though the FI is more responsive and smooth. If I let the Elegance sit a couple days without starting it tends to not want to start up right away and runs rough for about 1-2 km.

A bike with FI may be more suitable for a girl living in the city. If she plans to do some shopping, however, the Nouvo is worth consideration as it has a large storage space under the seat and a neat little hook up front to hang bags from.

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The Nouvo has a carb (vs FI for I believe all of the newest Hondas). If I'm in the boonies and something happens to the fuel system I'd rather have the carb though the FI is more responsive and smooth. If I let the Elegance sit a couple days without starting it tends to not want to start up right away and runs rough for about 1-2 km.

A bike with FI may be more suitable for a girl living in the city. If she plans to do some shopping, however, the Nouvo is worth consideration as it has a large storage space under the seat and a neat little hook up front to hang bags from.

The Airblade also has a nice storage area under the seat that is roughly comparable to the Nouvo's. It is a bit shallower but it's longer which is better for papers, file folders and the like that would get crimped in the Nouvo's deeper but slightly shorter under the seat storage. Also, if you like the hook up front that the Nouvo has, you can easily have one put on the Airblade. I recommended this to my friend David and the install was a snap and cheap. With either machine the under the seat storage is a big plus in real world city transportation. I never have to give a thought to the various small items I might purchase. No worries about having to strap them on, having to have saddle bags, or an extra cost storage tank that sits on the back of the bike and adds to its length and which I'd bet will need repair before the standard under the seat unit on Air Blades and Nouvos. "Real motorcycles don't have" the neat hook you mentioned because their fuel tanks are in the way and if that's not enough there are various hooks and places to attach bungee cords to so you can put even more things and much larger objects on the bike. As for baskets one would most likely resort to for the manual transmission bikes such as Honda Waves and Yamaha Sparks that sit on the front wheel, those are pretty stone age and most definitely affects handling adversely. I'd say it's a tossup between the Air Blade, Yamaha Elegance and Suzuki Hayake or similar but right now it looks like the Yamaha's out in front in the power department, Yamaha was the first to enter this market segment while the other companies sat by with their fingers up their butts, and they are still playing catchup.

Edited by jackcorbett
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Is this the shape to come? Review of Honda 300 c.c. SH 300 motorbike. I found it while trying to find out more about the Honda SH 150 I. For one thing this 300 c.c. model is rated at 67 miles per gallon. From what I'm reading the SH 150 I could very well get close to 100 miles per gallon--so the issue of gas hungry autos is one of relativity. It is expected Yamaha will soon introduce fuel injection to its Nouvo Elegance 135 c.c. while Honda is boasting 15 % better fuel efficiency for its Clicks and Air Blades than last year's models. As to this 300 scooter its reviewer thinks it's a great handling extremely well built machine. My guess is that all this talk questioning the reliability and performance of the automatics will soon become History just as the superiority of film cameras over digital cameras turned out to only be the last gasps of those wanting to hold onto the Stone Age. I'm not saying that all this new automatic technology will completely replace traditional motorcycles in the same way the digital camera has completely trounced and replaced film photography. But I'm saying it represents the wave of the future. I'd expect Honda will have to do something soon about meeting the Yamaha Elegance 135 c.c. big performance advantage over its 110 c.c. Air Blades. Apparently in other places in the world it has the higher performance models it needs. So I would expect Honda to be ahead for awhile and then Yamaha will step in once again and trump Honda. And so it will go with the two companies and others such as Suzuki introducing larger and larger machines here. To a point that is and that point won't be 500 c.c. Trimaxes and the like which are more suited to U.S. driving conditions. As for the Honda SH 150 I, it's hitting the U.S. market already at around $4500 which is pretty high due to the high cost of European labor. Here's another article predicting that this 150 c.c. bike at such a high price tag will prove to be an American marketing disaster. an American Honda marketing disaster while it extols the virtues of more traditional bikes such as the 250 c.c. Kawasaki Ninja that offer much greater performance at lower cost. However, the culprit here is not the technology but the much higher labor costs than they would be if the machinery were built in countries such as Thailand instead.

honda_sh300-21_med.jpg

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Thanks everyone

My friend found a one year old Click (Tune Up) with 3,500 kilometers for 31,000 incl. transfer.

Does that make it the latest fuel-injected version, or the version before that?

Sorry, I do not know the difference.

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Sorry, I do not know the difference.

Easy, when you turn the ignition on here will come a yellow light on, with an engine depicted in it. If so you have fuel injection.

If no yellow light present, then you have the older carburetted version.

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Sorry, I do not know the difference.

Easy, when you turn the ignition on here will come a yellow light on, with an engine depicted in it. If so you have fuel injection.

If no yellow light present, then you have the older carburetted version.

And didn't the introdution of fuel injection also bring about quite a noticeable change to the bodywork of the Click, like at the front with the wrap-around lights / indicators?

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My girlfriend has had her icon for about year now, I would recommend it for a rider of small size. We chose it specifically for its small size and light feel, seeing that she is a very slight girl. Don't have anything bad to report, has been running like a champ since we bought it, been through lots of kilos and two sets of tires already. Relatively cheap, easy on gas, easy to drive with the auto-trans, and enough power for her. I personally tend to avoid it just because it is so tiny - it makes me laugh when I ride it - but she loves it because she can handle it so easily. Zero storage space though - so don't plan on carrying anything, and riding 2-up is fine for moderate distances - but would not be if the passenger is super-sized. A good little machine suited to riders of small stature.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Im around 53-54kg and 5'7" and I adore the Icon. So, im not as tiny as some Thai girls, but even for my height and weight the Icon is SO comfortable. I can maneuver it easily and balance easily when getting through tight spaces. Even with my bf who is around 83kg on it too, it takes our weight easily. Ive just been renting at the moment, because i wanted to get a feel for it, but i think this is the one ill buy. Bf is trying to veer me into getting a Fino, saying it will be more comfortable in the long run and better value, but i think it will be more "weighty". Im used to riding a bicycle and the Icon kind of gives the same feel in the sense that it doesnt feel wide or bulky (if that makes any sense at all!).

For a lightweight bike for getting through the city I think the icon is great.

Edit: The Fino does look WAYYY more cooler though, have to say. I love that retro looking style. Wish the Icon was a bit more classic looking in that way.

Edited by eek
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Im around 53-54kg and 5'7" and I adore the Icon. So, im not as tiny as some Thai girls, but even for my height and weight the Icon is SO comfortable. I can maneuver it easily and balance easily when getting through tight spaces. Even with my bf who is around 83kg on it too, it takes our weight easily. Ive just been renting at the moment, because i wanted to get a feel for it, but i think this is the one ill buy. Bf is trying to veer me into getting a Fino, saying it will be more comfortable in the long run and better value, but i think it will be more "weighty". Im used to riding a bicycle and the Icon kind of gives the same feel in the sense that it doesnt feel wide or bulky (if that makes any sense at all!).

For a lightweight bike for getting through the city I think the icon is great.

Edit: The Fino does look WAYYY more cooler though, have to say. I love that retro looking style. Wish the Icon was a bit more classic looking in that way.

eek: try to rent a Fino before you buy any scooter. We bought a new Fino earlier this year and my wife love it and I like it too, it run very smoothly in the at times heavy Pattaya traffic. The space under the seat is very small and will only just fit 2 rain coats, but when go shopping you can put your groceries on the floorboard which can take quite a lot. So all in all a good buy :)

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