In the US, you don’t see a whole lot of people putting around on tiny scooters very often. The long highway commutes and high speed limits make your standard Vespa types pretty impractical for all but the most dedicated of Williamsburg hipsters.
It’s another story in Japan, though, where road commutes are comparatively shorter and speed limits within the city are only a little faster than a light jog anyway. Scooters are a common sight and come in tons of varieties, with two of Japan’s two-wheeled vehicle heavyweights, Suzuki and Yamaha, neck and neck for market share.
But it turns out that the two companies’ nearly identical scooter designs take a remarkably different tack when it comes to storage space. Tennis enthusiasts, especially, may want to take note:
Yamaha, in its design for its VOX line of scooters, has gone with a spacious under-saddle storage area that appears specifically designed to hold a pro-sized tennis racket, with the curvature of the back end of the space perfectly shaped to snugly accommodate the racket head and a lip at the front end extending out just enough for the end of the racket’s handle to rest. It’s a nice, hassle-free design that must also feel almost sexually satisfying to the obsessive compulsive, scooter riding tennis player demographic. I mean, look how nicely it fits!
Suzuki, on the other hand, apparently took a look at this design and was all, “Uh… yeah. Yeah, you can definitely fit a tennis racket in our scooters, too. Just, uh… hang on one sec…,” and proceeded to blowtorch an unceremonious trap door for the tennis racket’s handle to stick out of – ending up jutting out of the scooter’s body itself to rest right between the rider’s legs. The design is a little inexplicable, but given the under-saddle space is about all scooter makers have to work with in terms of storage, it’s nice Suzuki at least made the effort.
Plus, you can always grab the racket handle, pull up on it, and pretend it’s your badass drifting handbrake.
Source: Hamster Sokuhou
Feature Image: Yamaha via Hamster Sokuhou
Inset Image: Twitter/@chaost13