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  After receiving top honers in our mid size scooter battle, its time to give the SYM VS150 a full long term test. 6 months infact, putting it through the motions and of course the daily abuse scooters usually deal with in the real world.
First 2 week update : Picking up the VS from our local importer (thanks guys) it had 1 kilometer on the clock, nothing like something fresh out of the cargo crate. First impression showed that everything on the bike was in order. Not a single hickup or loose bolt from a sleep deprived night shift worker in Taiwan. Wearing it in over the first 500 km's can be painful, but I manged to hold myself back from the full throttle hyper warp-speed of this 15hp road rocket... barely!. No, but seriously speaking, it has a nice overall pickup that's quite linear. Good off the mark, progressive mid range, and nice top end, no real dips in its power curve or highlighted power areas, which in the real world is the perfect scenario. 
So, since then I've actually taken it on a 4 hour highway trip from Auckland to Whakatane and back. A serious journey for a 150cc scooter, but it managed to hold an average speed of 90-110 Kph. Speed depends on wind direction and seating position. With your head down, peeking over the dashboard you can manage 105-110kph. Add a tail wind and this can sometimes be 115. Sitting upright you're looking at 95-100 kph and with a head wind 90kph. This bike may not be quite built for the highway touring but still manages to be very comfortable over long distance. Maybe 2-3 more horsepower could give you the tiny bit more freedom to comfortably sit around 100-110 without hiding behind the dash. We will look into a small mod later on that might well give the HP to allow for this.
Around town its great. Plenty of room, comfort, usability and storage space for Africa. Its lacking a key turn seat button (you have to use key) and possibly a front glove box, but to be honest these are only very small issues. I'm still looking for any problems to report and I'm sure I will find something along the way, as we put it through it's paces. Next month I will show you how much I can actually carry on this thing, and its a lot more than a set of library books, try a small recording studio! See you in a month...
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