Tomos in USA?

[Werne]

I was just looking for info about the bike I own, a 1971 Tomos Automatic N "remenaš". I was looking for spare parts since I heard some can still be bought in Serbia when I found a lot of posts written in english on a Slovenian Tomos forum. I found that weird so I took a look and found out that those posts are written by guys from US. So I though some of the local guys smuggled them, it's not a strange thing when it comes to ex-Yugoslavia countries. But after I've read a few pages in Google I found Tomosusa.com, a page saying that Tomos has an office and distribution facility in Greenville. And it also distributes to Canada. I always thought Tomos is exporting only for Europe but it seems I'm wrong.

 

And the funniest part, it's written almost everywhere on the page that Tomos bikes are durable, reliable and high quality. I mean yeah, it's true, but not for the scooters.

 

The most durable and reliable Tomos is Tomos APN6 "Alpino", a 2 stroke 50ccm engine with a manual gear shift, 4 gears and you can add a fifth, and air cooling, a plastic case over the cylinder with a fan on the ignition magnet. It's older variant APN 4 has a more durable construction while the engine is the same. You can abuse it to a degree where the parts start falling off it, you can't overheat it and the only way to stop it from working is to deliberatly destroy it or to give it to an idiot for tuning. And as far as I can see, APN is not being sold in US which sucks, it's engine is perfect for tuning, just put a better Dellorto carbourator, polish the canals, insert the fifth gear and it can go 80-90 km/h and that's without any changes to the engine itself. A friend of mine has an APN that can go 150 km/h with no harmful consequences for the engine, I drove it over 150km/h a lot of times.

 

The ones that are being sold, at least according to the page, are a few scooters (I hate scooters, too unreliable), Sprint and ST (Tomos Automatic is how it's called here, 2 gears automatic shift, A55 50ccm engine), and the rest are just too plastic but they also use the A55 engine so I could tolerate the plastic parts. The A55 itself is durable and I must say, much better than A35 but it lacks power and ease of modifying compared to APN's engine. And I don't know why are APN series branded as discontinued when they are still being produced, I can go to the store right now and buy an APN produced a few days ago.

 

Anyway, I'm surprised to see Tomos motorbikes being sold in America. I know Tomos is a well known brand but I didn't think they have distribution centers in US and Canada. Kinda makes me proud (I'm partially Slovenian and I have Slovenian citizenship). And since I already wrote this wall of text (I get carried away when I talk about bikes), have you ever drove a Tomos motorbike? And if you did, what do you think of it? In my personal opinion, they are cheap and durable, a good choice for someone who doesn't have a lot of money or someone who preferes reliability and durability over speed and acceleration.

Edited June 2, 2012 by Werne

[Vindekarr]

In Australia we have our own equivalent-Royal Enfield. They are available from India, and are literally a brand new bike built to the exact spec of a much, much older machine from afforementioned company. I've seen a few around, they're dirt cheap and low tech, but from what I've heard, they're lovely to ride and tougher than a tank. The story goes that in India for the sake of cheap, cost effective transportation several models of cars, trucks, bikes and mopeds(scooters) stayed in production as much as 70 years after they stopped being made elsewhere. It was all in the name of affordability, but in recent years the bikes especialy have been seeing increasingly heavy export to Australia, which has a strong market for classics. I've seen a fair few of these Indian Enfields riding around, and they look damn good.