This article has been updated HERE
Scomadi is ‘inspired’ by Lambretta. Is Royalloy ‘inspired’ by Scomadi?
UK importers MotoGB have set the cat amongst the pigeons with a trade advert promoting a new scooter brand called Royalloy. The cropped scooter image accompanying their advert looks very much like a Scomadi horncasting grille.
Has the Scomadi been cloned? It’s a bit more complicated than that.
Royalloy
The Royalloy brand will be distributed in the UK by multi-brand importer, MotoGB and stock is due in dealers by April. Lancashire based MotoGB also have Sym, Royal Enfield and Benelli under their corporate umbrella but as well as Royalloy they will also be adding a range of budget bikes under the Hanway brand name, as well as F.B Mondial, a middle of the road 125cc brand, (using Aprilia derived engines and forks).
What’s in a name?
Initially Royalloy will be available as a 125cc (larger capacities to follow) in two versions, Basic and Premium. The Basic model will be pretty similar to the existing Scomadi but will have an alloy headset (Scomadi were already planning that modification before the 200 arrived). There’s also a chance the Basic version will come as a 50cc.
The Premium version is where things get a bit different though, it will come with all aluminium bodywork. Steel bodywork on a scooter is fairly rare these days (Vespa and LML are the only brands to use it), alloy is unheard of. Even the exclusive Vespa 946 ended up using pressed steel rather than more expensive aluminium.
Vespa-style Royalloy
More interestingly we are told that there will be a Vespa-esque Royalloy. The first of these models will be a modern retro styled scooter with Vespa-like styling. Think Neco Abruzzi etc.
Whether this paves the way for other aluminium bodied Vespa style classics we’ll have to wait and see.
How has this happened?
Scomadi have had two years of production and huge success around the world. The Scomadi scooters, up until recently, have been produced by the Hanway factory in China. In fact, Hanway’s own website still shows Scomadi as a product.
Putting 2 and 2 together it looks like Hanway aren’t prepared to lose that business and thus the Royalloy Basic and Premium were born; potentially producing similarly-styled scooters based around the same platform.
Quite how this is all going to pan out has yet to be revealed.
If you want to know more, Get To SLUK!
My old mate Roy should get one of these! Hee hee! 😉
Interesting times. The name kind of makes sense if they’re going for an ali body but that’s a DREADFUL logo!
And you know that ‘interesting times’ is a curse…
Appropriately, a Chinese curse!
I hope Frank and Paul have good lawyers!
The Chinese are renowned for not respecting copyright and intellectual property…oh, and international waters….oh, and human rights….but don’t we just love all their cheap and cheerful crap? Thank God for Chinese sweatshops eh? Doomed, aye, we are all doomed! 🙁 Mad apes the lot of us.
Many thanks for great service good good product
good news, scomadi been too expensive for a Chinese scoot. perhaps royalloy/ hanway can turn out something vespa style better than the neco Abruzzi and modena
moto gb covering a niche in case they have to dump lml
silly name. do we pronounce it roy-alloy or royal-loy ?
this from about 3 years ago…https://www.hanwaymotor.com/scooter-detail-tl%2050-125-300.htm
Looks like RoyAlloy is already a registered trademark by a US based company for a specialised form of metal for moulding purposes. Ooooops!
https://www.bucorp.com/royalloy_p.htm
The Chinese better have good lawyers….oh yeah, they don’t give a SLUK! 😉
I wonder how this will affect traders, say for instance a dealer already stocks scomadi but also stocks other MotoGB brands. It’s common knowledge that stock of scomadi’ recently have been slow to arrive, in fact it’s been months for some so if those dealers were offered stock of these scomadi clones would it be suffice to say that scomadi will get the hump with those traders. I know personally from a business perspective if you have to buy a product first in order to retail it but you can get the same product with a different badge on SOR for 12 months like other MotoGB brands I’d know what I’d do.
However after SLUK’s recent rip off britain article it’s very underhanded to clone something that has been heavilly invested in by a UK brand and marketed worldwide.
It probably goes to show how manufacturing in China has it’s disadvantages regardless of the cost effectivness.
Are the rumours true that these are made from recycled Chinese Takeaway foil containers that we sold back to the Chinese at vastly inflated prices in the late 90`s? My mate Mike Hunt says so