Comfort
I would have to say that it's quite an awesome little ride to get around and about town and to nearby suburbs. I measured out my ride from home to work and it is 5km. Early morning and late afternoons tend to be my riding times and it's been pretty good. It's not a scooter that I would recommend to someone with back problems however, I think that you would still feel a bit too much of the road through the seat.
Quality
To be honest I've thought that everything has been bolted together very well and nothing is joined or fitted badly. It's still a sizable lump of plastic, allow and steel but it's a well put together chunk of it. I quite liked the seat cover and the cushioning too. The tires are cheng shins and while they are not anything to write home about they are still pretty good for the standard brisbane road surface which has a few gaping potholes here and there but nothing like tram tracks. If anything I do wish for better braking.
Acceleration, Top speed & Handling
If you are gently rolling on the throttle from takeoff there will be a lag between idle to about 20-30, or you can burn some fuel and crank it on a bit higher and you have no delay from takeoff. I've got that leo vinci pipe on it and while it's loud, it has definitely given the beewee some extra power. It feels really stable from 60 or 70km onwards, but reaction braking at this speed is pretty average.
The scooter is very easily flickable allowing for really easy turning,
and I do the slow, look, lean, and roll-on of the accelerator
throughout turns and the scooter handles very nicely. I'm not a racer
by any means but you can ride really smoothly with the beewee, and that's where I get most of my enjoyment out of it. If you take a turn too fast and end up leaning over sharply, the centre
stand will scrape. If you happen to like to lean over a lot, then take
off that centre stand..
When sold to me it was credited by the team-moto guys in moorooka as their favourite scooter,
and someone else upon seeing it told me to ride it like I stole it. I've gotten a few comments from people who on hearing that I bought a scooter told me it was too small and dangerous, but on seeing it those doubts were dismissed.
Modification
The leo vinci pipe is effin loud and there's not much I can do about it. I am in a bit of a bind when slow-riding because I don't want to sound like some toss over-revving his scooter while going very slowly, but that's exactly what happens when slow-riding properly. I tend to just have minimal throttle to slow-ride whenever possible to avoid the noise. If people were going to modify their beewee, don't just get sold on the pipe fitted with nothing else done to it... despite what the salesperson will say you need a bit more done to it for the scooter to feel just right. Go to scooterhq for their ballistic beewee recipe instead.
Having said that, the pipe does help keep me visible in peak hour traffic and I just don't have the types of people pulling in front of me that my friend on his vespa lx50 has, and I can only credit that due to the noise of the pipe.
Usage
My daily commute used to be a bus into and out of brisbane city from newfarm, but now the 5km trip is handled in about 10min or less via the scooter. I am confident of the scooters abilities on any major arterial road, and out on the highway while I was on the vmoto monaco I found myself wishing that I'd taken the beewee out to the test. But that would have meant riding illegally to the test. :| With the pipe I would definitely be able to handle the highway speeds although I'd be a bit worried about frame rattle at the top end- due to my top-box. I have to admit that the scooter is quite light, and I get buffeted a bit by moderate winds and can also get buffeted by large vehicles tailwind. In terms of fuel usage... any economy that I had has been spoilt by the pipe, and I think I have a range of approximately 85-110km or so on about 3.5-4L of fuel at my 1000km stage/age. However that includes an aggressive throttle roll-on to match a normal car's acceleration and also some 80-100km stints here and there.
In the next 4 or so years
I'll most likely be going up to a larger capacity scooter or motorcycle having discovered the fun of two wheels.
It's definitely a scooter that you can learn on, and it's a helluva lot
of fun to ride. I did my q-ride test on a v-moto monaco, and while
that felt a lot more stable going through turns, it just seemed quite a
lot more boring and pedestrian compared to the beewee. So for my buy,
it was pretty good. If I had to buy again, I'y be looking at the other scooters in the range, since the yamaha camera promotion was the clincher for me. Its definitely one of those cultish scooters, it can create some real die-hard fans just because it's so unique, but I definitely wish for better braking ability (both on my end and the scooter's) and also wish for just a little bit more leg room to help brace myself for emergency stops because I still haven't figured out the super-safe way to emergency brake myself on the beewee. For anyone scooter shopping... definitely follow everyones' advice and get your license first so you can test-ride all the different scooters. The beewee just seemed to click for me and that was it.