Royal Alloy 150 Review

[kz1000st]

http://www.scooterfile.com/scooter-reviews/royal-alloy-gt150-rider-review/

Not bad for 150cc GY6

[kz1000st]

My thing about this is the engine. I have heard over the years that the GY6 is a POS. But read this story. The owner stayed below 1/2 throttle before 1,000 miles, did all the checkups and broke it in right. Then after 1,000 miles he gets on it for 1652 miles of hard running and the engine is still humming.

Here it is. A quality built scooter without bogus components, assembled out of the crate by a dealer and owned by a conscientious owner. I said it before and I'll say it again. The biggest problem with Chinese scooters was unscrupulous importers and uninformed owners. Now that you can buy them from dealers all those problems seem to have disappeared. Ten years ago Scootdawg was buzzing with problems and now the chatter is down considerably. Amazing isn't it??

[kz1000st]

I finally got to see the Royal Alloy 150 in the flesh. Here's the thing. If you smack it with a knuckle you can see it's a metal body. But does it look so hot? Nah. In the same place they had a Lance Havana which really looks better, has a 169cc engine and, with the dealers markup to $3799 on the Royal Alloy, is a thousand bucks cheaper.

Tradition is nice but I like to get what I pay for. A Lance is a better value. Heck, the Wolf Blaze 150cc next to the Royal Alloy had the same engine, is probably lighter and is $1699 at the dealer. I know what I would spend my money on.

[sc00ter]

I've yet to see the RA in person, but the Liberty is coming up for a service soon so I may get to see one soon enough. You mentioned Lance and they actually have great value products, and great looking to boot! Still curious as to the long term wear and tear on a RA. My friend has a Lance Cabo 200i (yes, I know its a plastic) and its been a bullet proof tank, both in reliability and cosmetic wear.

[kz1000st]

Up until the RA the only all steel scooter in production was the Vespa. We can dance until the cows come home over this but when Everybody in the scooter universe is using plastic over steel there is some reason.

I pointed out over at MV that for a mere $3000 a Piaggio Fly 150 has the same engine as a Vespa Sprint or Primavera at $5500. Your Liberty also is powered by the same engine (with a longer case for bigger wheels) at thousands less.

To me the RA is cute but when I can buy something like a Lance Italia Classic for $2300 with a 150cc GY6 like the RA is powered by it doesn't make much sense.

Throw in a comparison like the RA versus the Lance 200i series for a grand less and steel versus tube under plastic seems pretty moot.

[wheelbender6]

A steel body is not so appealing when you live near the salt water like me. Looks great though.

[kz1000st]

I got to see a Royal Alloy in the flesh and I wasn't impressed. For the price it didn't look as good as the Lance Italian lookalikes nearby and with their 200cc engines were a thousand bucks less. For pure styling the Royal alloy paled in comparison to the Wolf Blaze 150cc next to it. The Wolf, with the same engine as the RA, was two thousand dollars less.

I rely on bang for the buck, not tradition.

[wheelbender6]

They need to bring water cooled 200 scooter engines back into production. There are no new ones available these days.

[kz1000st]

Yes, but at a reasonable price. At the moment the Yamaha SMax fills the bill for 200cc performance at a Vespa 50cc price. It has been clocked at 80 mph top speed in several road tests.

[wheelbender6]

I guess price was the problem with the water cooled 200s. It didn't cost much more to get a 250 scoot that looked like a maxi scoot.
-I hope we will see more scoots like the smax soon. They offer a big bunch of speed for the dollar.