The Silliest New Scooter In The World Might Be This Yamaha With Winglets And As Much Carbon Fiber As A Sports Car

The humble maxi-scooter like the Yamaha TMAX 560 is low-key one of the greatest ways to get around on two wheels. These scooters are fast enough to outrun traffic on America’s highways, handle well enough to carve mountain curves, and are comfortable like a two-wheeled Cadillac. But a maxi isn’t what some people would call “sexy.” Well, the folks at Mansory have come up with the solution by slathering winglets, a huge intake, glowing badges, and feet of carbon fiber onto an unsuspecting Yamaha. Is this the silliest scooter in the world? I think so, and I cannot stop laughing.

The maxi-scooter is a wonderful chimera. The concept is simple: Take everything that rocks about scooters, like a step-through design, great maneuverability, enhanced weather protection, and good storage, then scale it up. Put a big enough engine in it that it can hit the ton (100 mph). A maxi-scooter is great for the kind of person who wants the long legs of a Harley dresser or a Honda Gold Wing, but prefers a more easygoing package. I once owned a 2005 Suzuki Burgman 650, and it was one of the coolest bikes I’ve ever ridden.

However, for some people, a maxi-scooter just doesn’t have the kind of cool factor that a traditional motorcycle has. A Harley has a meaty V-twin engine that’s either darker than Batman or lined with enough blinding chrome to see from space. Some new Royal Enfields have more heavy metal than the average Coachella. Honda runs the gamut from the adorable Monkey to the marvelous Gold Wing. If, for whatever reason, you thought a maxi wasn’t cool enough, the folks at Mansory have just the thing. They’ve adorned a Yamaha TMAX 560 with some of the tropes of modern high-end sportbikes.

Mansory Goes Hard

If you’ve made it this far in life without knowing what Mansory is, oh, you’re in for a ride.

Mansory Design & Holdings GmbH was founded in 1989 in Munich by car tuner Kourosh Mansory, who had a thing for kitting up Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, Aston Martins, and Ferraris. Cars were the recipient of Mansory’s adoration at a young age, but he went to school in England with the intention of becoming a hotelier someday. When he returned to Germany, Mansory abandoned the whole hotel idea and got into the business of making aftermarket accessories for high-end British and Italian cars.

Fast-forward more than 30 years, and Mansory is known worldwide for its exploits. In addition to its normal luxury fare, Mansory has touched a little bit of everything from golf carts and Smart Fortwos to boats and the Tesla Cybertruck. A large part of what keeps Mansory in the public eye is how, we’ll say, bombastic each of Mansory’s builds is. This all-gold Mercedes-AMG G63 is actually one of the tamer things Mansory has done up:

Now, behold the Under Armour Le Mansory Ford GT:

Honestly, I respect Mansory’s commitment to going weird and wild, no matter what commentators on the Internet say. You do you, Mansory! Also, I wasn’t kidding about that Smart:

Occasionally, Mansory dips into projects involving fewer than four wheels. In 2010, it built the Zapico, an all-carbon fiber muscle bike with a 124-cubic-inch S&S V-twin making 160 HP on tap.

In 2024, Mansory got back into the two-wheeled game by snatching a Vespa and covering it in luxury touches. Weirdly, the Mansory Vespa Elettrica Monaco Edition was remarkably restrained compared to Mansory’s normal fare. The scooter has some carbon fiber trim, carbon fiber side covers, a quilted leather seat, and some arguably tasteful striping.

Maybe I’m crazy, but this looks pretty cool. Apparently, Mansory put 99 of these on the market. Price? Mansory never mentions it, but I bet the number is a large one. A regular Vespa Elettrica costs $$8,000. Amusingly, no performance modifications are done, so all of that carbon fiber still gets you to the blistering top speed of 45 mph.

Now, with the new “Mansory Maxi Scooter,” we have Mansory getting a little closer to the madness it’s known for, and I love it.

All Of The Winglets

According to Mansory, its customers and fans loved the Vespa so much that they demanded a similar treatment for a scooter on the far other side of the spectrum: the Yamaha TMAX 560.

The TMAX 560 launched in 2020 as the next generation of Yamaha’s maxi-scooter platform that’s been in production since 2001. According to Yamaha, the TMAX grew out of the success of the Majesty of the 1990s. That scooter was designed for the Japanese market, but was sold worldwide. The TMAX was designed for European riders and was engineered to be able to handle the abuses of Germany’s Bundesautobahn and Italy’s autostrade.

In 2020, Yamaha increased the engine size from 530cc to 562cc to comply with Euro 5 exhaust standards while also giving a side benefit of better performance. That performance, Yamaha says, is actually mostly in the low- to mid- RPM regime because the point of the TMAX is not about all-out horsepower, but settling into a good, comfortable high-speed cruise. In 2022, the TMAX got a fully digital ride-by-wire system, an upgrade from the cable-based throttle computerization system it got in 2017.

That parallel-twin makes 47.5 HP and 40.6 lb-ft of torque, which is good enough to get the 485-pound scooter to a top speed of 112 mph. It’s one of the fastest mass-production scooters on sale right now, which is so awesome. My Suzuki Burgman 650 topped out at 110 mph on a very good day.

Mansory’s version of the Yamaha TMAX 560 amounts to a dress-up kit, as if the scoot crashed into a Pep Boys, only managing to snag a ton of carbon fiber, rather than miles of chrome. Mansory has added carbon fiber to the mirrors, nose, fender, air intake, side covers, upper covers, rear covers, and lower covers. Mansory even adds an itty-bitty attachment for the exhaust pipe heat shield.

In case that’s not enough carbon fiber, Mansory added two large carbon fiber winglets up front, and then two more winglets right next to the passenger seat, because why not? Winglets usually do have a real performance benefit in motorcycling, namely downforce. Mansory doesn’t even claim any performance benefit here.

As a finishing touch, the scooter has no fewer than five Mansory logos, three of which light up.

Mansory notes that this is being sold as a kit that you can slap onto any Yamaha TMAX 560. Apparently, you have to buy everything as one package, and Mansory won’t sell you any of the bits separately. How much is that package? Once again, Mansory doesn’t say, but various reports suggest that it’ll cost at least $20,000 (£14,776) on top of the donor TMAX 560. A Yamaha TMAX 560 already costs the equivalent of $19,700 (£14,553), so you’re looking at a $40,000 (£29,552) smack to the bank account. That’s just plain nutty for a scooter.

Sadly, or thankfully, depending on how you see this thing, like most of the world’s craziest scooters, Americans don’t get the Yamaha TMAX 560. Yamaha used to sell its big-bore scooter here from around 2008 to 2015. Instead, the hottest scooter we can buy is the Kymco AK 550i Premium, which is only slightly slower. The fastest Yamaha scoot in America is the XMAX, which has a mild 292cc single-cylinder engine.

That said, Mansory itself does sell products to Americans, so if you can somehow get a TMAX, you can probably get the kit.

Why Do I Love This Thing?

It would be very easy to mock the Mansory Maxi Scooter. It’s stupidly expensive, stupidly excessive, and like most Mansory products, the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

But in this case, I think it’s so stupid and so silly that it comes back to being fun again. There’s no way I could take a bog-standard maxi-scooter seriously with not just one, but four winglets. The gaping mouth of an intake and the carbon fiber sneezed all over everything just amp up the silly. I also love how the rear winglets are placed precariously close to the pillion seat, so that your passenger will inevitably grab them rather than the actual grab bars.

This is the kind of scooter that I could see myself owning for the fun of it. Have it in hot pink, dress up in full Power Ranger-esque gear, and pretend like I’m in MotoGP. Is that how the typical Mansory buyer will use it? I have no idea. Maybe someone is going to park their Winglet-ized Yamaha next to their Mansory G63? It’s a shame this thing is so crazy expensive and made for a scooter we can’t buy, because it could make for some real harmless fun, and I think the world could use more of that. Oh well, I guess I could always 3D print some silly winglets for my Vespa.