Trials Bikes from Scorpa

Scorpa

Scorpa is the long-lived sole French producer of trials motorcycles. In the 1990's, the company promoted its Rotax-powered Easy series of bikes using top British trials star Graham Jarvis. Despite success at the top level of World Trials Championship competition, the design grew to be a bit long-in-the-tooth by the end of the 1990's, so the company withdrew from the World Trials Championship series to concentrate on the successor to the Easy.

The effort became a joint-effort with Yamaha to produce a Yamaha-powered trials machine, incorporating the lessons-learned and design philosophy of Scorpa. The result was the TY-Z 250 powered SY-250 Racing, a linkageless rear suspended design, incorporating billet-aluminum triple clamps, footpegs, swingarm, hubs, current generation suspension components. In practice, a torquey, smooth, plushly suspended trials mount, perfect for the club rider, but with the potential to compete at the top levels of national and world competition as illustrated by a series of Japanese riders over the past decade. The machine proved as well to be popular with the adventure riding group in its LongRide edition, with a larger gas tank and a small seat to make longer trail excursions more comfortable.

With the once-looming "four-stroke only" rule in mind, Scorpa turned to Yamaha once more to help provide a 250cc four-stroke powerplant for the next step in their design ladder. Yamaha offered up a modified WR 250F motor focused towards a trials application. Scorpa complemented the motor with a lightweight twin-spar frame, latest generation suspension, and an singular exhaust system with the muffler directly below the airbox and rear fender to help keep mass centralized and low. This is the SY-250F Racing.

Scorpa has also resurrected a segment of the trials/trail riding market that disappeared in the 1970's with the demise of Honda's TL trials lineup. Using the Yamaha TTR-125 motor as the basis, Scorpa designed a lightweight frame and trials running gear and controls to offer up the SY-125F Racing and SY-200F Racing models, as purpose-built, lightweight four-stroke trials machines. These have proven popular as crossover machines for those folks looking for a bike for their wives and for hunting. The SY-250F Racing is also available as cross-over machine with a larger tank and an actual seat, and a lighting package: the SY-250F LongRide--a higher power output, lightweight technical trial/trail riding machine.

Anticipated for 2009 is the long-awaited T-Ride, an ultra-lightweight trail bike, based on the SY-250F Racing, but with slightly more suspension, a real seat, and larger tank, perfect for stealth adventure trail riding, and weighing in at close to 40 pounds less than contemporary small displacement trail bikes like the CRF 230 and TTR 230.

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