People may have noticed that I recently bought Doug's Beverly 350 Sport Touring to replace the ailing baby Burger as my commuter scoot. I've had it a week now so here are some first impressions.

1st impression - its small! Very short, but tall, with a high seat height. The weight is carried quite high up as well. Its so short and tall, its like a Supermoto!

Its not the prettiest of things, but the fake red leather seat and backrest are quite nice, if a bit girly. Underseat luggage space is quite acceptable - room for a full face helmet plus lock, waterproofs etc or a briefcase type bag, or you can even get an armoured bike jacket in there. It also has a moderately sized topbox. As for room for the rider, its not the biggest thing around - very big people will find it cramped, but it seems less cramped than I remember the SH300 being.

How does it go? Like stink! With 33bhp in something that size it doesn't half go well - acceleration wise, its doesn't seem to give too much away compared to the Tmax at Urban speeds anyway. Happy to zoom down dual carriageways at 80+ without even trying. No idea about economy yet.

Ride wise, its quite stiff. Round town its fine, but if you venture out into the sticks, its clearly not in its element. However, its firm rather than harsh, and the suspension is quite controlled. In contrast the burger was quite softly sprung, but the suspension was completely confused by having to deal with more than one bump at a time.

Handling wise, the main thing is that compared to the Tmax which requires only the gentlest persuasion to go round corners, the Bev requires a firm hand with decisive countersteering to make it go round corners. You need the throttle on as well, or it'll understeer into the hedge. When you get used to it, its actually quite sharp and fun.

The bad things? The seat is opened by a button on the dash, which will get covered by the handlebar muffs when I put them on (the bars are completely exposed as it is) - whats wrong with being opened by the key like every other scoot? The worst thing is the Speedo....its a long way beneath you, and the main figures are in KPH. However, even the KPH figures are hard to read, let alone the smaller mph ones, so I've no idea how fast I'm going without a long long look at the dial, which I'm not that keen to do!

Its a fascinating contrast with the Tmax mk4. Whilst the Tmax looks butch, its actually quite soft and user friendly, whilst the Bev looks girly, but is actually quite hard edged! You can see where the extra money goes for the Tmax - the Tmax suspension & chassis is just in a different league. I used to have an SH300, which I fell out of love with (apart from the engine). The Bev strikes me as better - more go, more comfortable, less cramped, and much more luggage space.

So overall it actually strikes me as the ultimate commuter - small enough for extremes of urban combat, but easily enough grunt to handle the fastest motorway. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't want to tour Europe on it....though some people do!

That's an excellent review and it sounds like you're bonding. I would agree with all of your comments - have you thought about the Tucano muffs? At least then the switches aren't hidden inside the muff itself.... I too had the same problem with the speedo. What I did was mount a RAM 1" ball on the lower windscreen mount (you can see it in my Europe videos) and then I had a proper speedo using my GPS unit. Otherwise I got used to my little bits of electrical tape!

I probably will be using the Tucano muffs (the other ones won't fit), but on my trial fit it seemed that both the saddle release and Mode buttons will be inside the muff, which will be a further irritant, though the heated grips button will be outside.

These ones don't cover the switches at all...

http://www.urbanrider.co.uk/brands/tuca ... eight.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I nearly bought one a year ago but bottled it? http://www.maxi-muppets.co.uk/forum/vie ... 0&p=161833" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That was a good read, nice one.

Very good review Grumpy. I've always wondered what they were like, now I know! Thanks for that and glad you like it.

Good write-up, although I only had a morning's test ride a few months back, I certainly enjoyed it more than I'd expected to and the performance was impressive.

I really enjoyed the stability and cornering ability, though I've never had a TMax to compare too, I think this is because it benefits from bigger wheels than most scoots, but slinging around country lanes was surprisingly entertaining. The brakes were another thing that really impressed.

Interested to see what mpg you get on regular commuting, hopefully 80ish.

poldark wrote: The brakes were another thing that really impressed.

Interested to see what mpg you get on regular commuting, hopefully 80ish.

Yes, the brakes seem pretty good - nice feel. I somehow doubt I'll get 80mpg though....its not the way I ride! Though there again, I'm not using anything like its full performance, so it shouldn't be too bad.

I've got the first fuel economy figure now - 69mpg, which isn't too bad. There were a couple of very short journeys and a couple of rather fast ones, so it might turn out better than that in the long run (or maybe I'll just twist the throttle harder!).