(Would a 750 cc Vespa be a welcomed addition to the American market?)

Today I was trolling the Motoblog.it and saw a couple of things that caught my attention. One was Rossi having fun on his boat (NSFW!) and the other was not nearly as nice... it was horrible actually; a video of a sport bike rider in a fatal collision with a huge truck.

I'm not the kind of guy who finds great entertainment in that sort of thing, but curiosity got the best of me and what I saw was basically a rider unable to handle his crotch rocket at 100mph in a hard right turn. He drifted into the oncoming lane and in a last ditch effort to save himself, attempted to overshoot the lane and hit the brushy overgrowth on the other side. He didn't make it.

That led to this question that is especially important for American riders: How much power is adequate? Do you need a bike that can get you to the speed limit? Maybe 10-15mph over the speed limit? Do you need to reach 100mph? Faster?

It seems to me, one of the biggest death-dealers on a sport bike is their speed capability. Generally Americans have had the bigger-is-better approach to... well... EVERYTHING. So when it comes to bikes, is 1200cc enough? How about 250cc? I can say this, I took on SoCal's 405, 710 and the 605 with a Yamaha Majesty and it had NO problems at all... even doing 95mph on highway 710... um, not that I would do anything like that... but, erhm, I imagine it to be completely possible.

So what do YOU think? Should a new rider get a scooter now or wait until the Gilera GP800 (800cc) scooter is released? How much power does one need?

Read the complete post at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheScooterScoop/~3/326006403/engine-size-when-is-enough-actually.html