Malaguti are back, but are they really back?
 
Malaguti Madison 300, looking rather familiar...
Malaguti Madison 300, looking rather familiar…

 

It says the ‘Spirit of Bologna’ on the sign, but the scooter alongside looks very much like an Italian creation from another famous brand located nearer to Pisa.

 

The Malaguti name – associated with some of the funkiest scooters of the 1990s boom such as the F12 – is now in the hands of the KSR Group.

 

Austrian company KSR are behind some major brands now such a Lambretta scooters, Brixton and KSR motorcycles and most recently Malaguti which they are using as a brand for both scooters and motorcycles. They tell us that production is now taking place in China.

 

Malaguti Madison 300 spec for 2019
Malaguti Madison 300 spec for 2019

 

At EICMA they’ve put on display a machine that they are calling the Malaguti Madison 300, named after Malaguti’s old Madison maxi-scooter. The strange thing about it is that it doesn’t look anything like the Madison design. Instead it looks very much like a Gilera Nexus – a Piaggio Group design from 2004 which is no longer in the Piaggio range.

 

This is not a bad thing – the Nexus was always a good maxi-scooter and probably better than the original Madison – but badge-engineering a rival product is a confusing way to re-launch a historic scooter brand.

 

At the moment KSR don’t have distribution sorted for the UK. We suspect the Madison will be targeted to countries with a much bigger maxi-scooter market.

 

The quoted price is unexceptional at €4,600, but this now comes with the added cost of ABS and a Euro-4 spec engine. Colours offered are Red or Black.

 

Iggy modelling the Gilera Nexus, before he had the operation...
Iggy modelling the Gilera Nexus, before he had the operation…

 

MOTOR

 

As expected, the motor in the display scooter is indeed from Piaggio, but that doesn’t mean that it will be made in Pontedera. Could Piaggio have sold off this older design of motor to another factory, or have they restarted supply of engines to other manufacturers?

 

Either way, it goes some way to explaining the presence of what looks very much like a Piaggio 300 motor in the Royal Alloy GP300

 

The Gilera Nexus always used a Piaggio motor, but where will they be made in the future?
The Gilera Nexus always used a Piaggio motor, but where will they be made in the future?
The Piaggio 300 is a good motor.
The Piaggio 300 is a good motor.

New products always in development…