Scooter Review Bug Agility 125 Squeezing a 125cc engine into a light, short and sharp package pays dividends around town
Words by JEREMY BOWDLER, photography by KEVIN LING With Bug’s new Agility, the fit’s so good it’s almost a contortion. Or that’s how I felt when I shoe-horned my frame behind the legshields. It’s a tight squeeze for my 195cm, but all was forgiven when I twisted the throttle. There are few more entertaining scooters than this one.
The 125cc four-stroke engine is a zippy little unit (6.9kW at 7000rpm) and has no trouble in dealing with the traffic in a scooter’s natural environment, but what happens when you enter the real world of that dreaded freeway run home? With the Agility, you just twist the throttle further. Pete’s 84km round-trip commute encompasses highway, freeway, main roads and city streets and the little Bug just ate it up. His only comment? Legroom’s a bit tight.
Larger people on smaller scooters deal with it in one of two ways: ride with your legs spread wide or ride with your knees together and do the scooter slalom like a downhill skier. Otherwise you run the risk of jamming the ’bars into the tops of your knees and a distinctly ungraceful topple over at walking pace, which might attract a degree of difficulty score, but won’t win you any artistic interpretation marks with the judges.
 Even so, riding the Agility is proof positive that utilitarian scooters can be fun. A steep steering angle allied to a short wheelbase and a punchy engine make the Agility, well, agile. D’oh...
Low-speed manoeuvres such as tight Uturns, filtering through traffic or just taking advantage of the scooter’s small size are easy as pie as the Bug responds to your every command instantly. The normal downside of this low-speed agility is often a corresponding high-speed instability. So what happens to the Bug at speed?
It gets exciting. It’s as if the designers have taken the scooter to the point of nervous instability and then taken a step back from the precipice. The result is a scooter that is lively and always exciting, but which never threatens to toss you on your ear.
A lot of the reason for this can be attributed to the suspension and the tyres. The Bug is relatively stiffly sprung. Not to the point of being too firm, but just the right side of harsh. The result is a controlled ride over bumps, with the odd shake through the ’bars, and a nicely compliant attitude to keeping the wheels on the ground and pointing in the same direction. The Cheng Shin rubber – 120/70 at the front and 130/70 at the rear – mounted on 12-inch rims matches the performance of the engine/suspension package nicely and allows significant levels of grip and stability and that, in turn, allows you to make the most of the daily ride.
The front brake, a twin-piston caliper acting on a disc, is strong and progressive and hauls the scooter down from speed easily. The rear, on the other hand, is a bit dead in feel and a bit softer in power than I would like. When we got the scooter, it was badly adjusted with far too much lever action required to operate the small drum brake. Winding on the adjustment nut helped with the lever travel, but overall the brake is a bit wooden. It works okay in slowing the bike and in keeping everything tidy in corners, but it is not up to the quality of the front stopper. I’d be investigating different, aftermarket brake shoes when replacement time came around.
The panel fit and finish is on a par with the competition, good enough though not outstanding, and the tubular steel rear rack is functional, though a bit ugly. I’m pleased to say, however, that the Agility not only comes with a headlight on/off switch (and that at least gives you the option of riding with or without lights) but also features a neat, digital clock; and that is something that should be mandatory on any scooter that is to be used about town. What’s the point of having the most efficient urban transport if you have to stop and look at your watch?
The speedo face is easy to read, if a little busy, with mph markings inside the larger km/h units, while a neat fuel gauge sits to the right. There are no indicator idiot lights, replaced by a beeping flasher unit that performs much the same function, only slightly better since you can tell without looking whether or not you are confusing the following drivers. The horn is of the friendly beep-beep variety, rather than the klaxon you sometimes need to wake dozing motorists. Colour options include blue/black, red/black, silver/black and black/black.
Lifting the seat (key-operated) reveals a large storage area that’ll swallow a fullface helmet (full marks here) as well as a neat alloy fuel cap. Filling the Agility is easy and there is little chance of blowing fuel everywhere when the pump shuts off as is the case with many scooters. In any case, you’d only spill a maximum of five litres, because that’s all the tank will take. We got the Agility with 0km on the clock and the first tank covered 135km before the needle was hovering below the red forcing a quick top-up. Those first kilometres included Pete’s big commute and my innercity version. The receipt said I put 4.2 litres of finest ULP into the agility, which works out at 3.1L/100km. As the motor beds in, I’d expect a reasonable decrease in fuel consumption, to well below the 3L/100km and a theoretical maximum range of about 180km – or about three weeks for my daily usage. Of course that’s assuming you don’t go ballistic with the throttle. It’s easy to do with the Agility!
As published in TW SCOOTER MAGAZINE - 21/03/2006
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