BMW has always placed performance at the forefront of their vehicle designs, and though we tend to associate cars with the German brand, the company actually started building bikes in 1923, 5 years before their first car rolled out their factory doors.
It seems that BMW is now looking to revive its C1 scooter that features a roof to help reduce exposure to the elements for their riders, and not to mention plenty of speed, power and creature comforts of heated seats and grips. Their strategy is simple – to re-active those who used to ride scooters in their youth who drive cars now.
Meaning to say, they hope to appeal to a more mature crowd with their maxi scooters with future plans that will see BMW expand their scooter line-up with an all-electric powered variant by 2014 – dubbed the C evolution, that will have its electric power stored in a lithium-ion battery from their i3 concept vehicle that’s due out sometime next year. The BMW C evolution e-Scooter’s planned debut in 2014 should happen around the same time as the SMART e-Scooter.
Another reason for BMW to create a new market for their upcoming scooters is that European bike sales figures have declined heavily by 38% over the last 5 years pinching BMW’s bike sales (including their Husqvarna brand) to fall by 4.2% in 2011. And in order to boost their sales figures from this year onwards, BMW recently rolled out their 60bhp C600 Sport and C650 GT scooters both with an automatic transmission that’s capable of sprinting to 100kmh in 7.1s and topping out at 175kmh.
