Waiting for the Wolf, and Waiting, and Waiting…

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com

It was last autumn that Libby’s Motoworld in New Haven quietly signed up as a dealer of SYM scooters and motorcycles. Already a dealer in Honda, Triumph, Yamaha and Victory motorcycles, Libby’s didn’t trumpet the arrival of the new brand as Alliance Powersports, SYM’s distributor in the U.S., hadn’t yet received a license from the state to market its products in Connecticut.

More than six months later, SYM still doesn’t have that necessary state license and Libby’s still doesn’t mention SYM on its website. Both the distributor and the dealer are exceedingly frustrated.

“I can’t register them (in Connecticut),” Dan Coppolella of Libby’s sales department said this afternoon. Consequently, while Libby’s has a few SYM scooters on the showroom floor that it can sell to out of state buyers, the dealership doesn’t have SYM’s most attractive model, the 2013 Wolf Classic 150 motorcycle (shown at top and below).

 

It was a story in the new July/August issue of “Motorcycle Classics” magazine on the Wolf Classic 150 that aroused RIDE-CT’s curiosity as to whether SYM actually had a dealer in Connecticut. The story showed a snazzy little single-cylinder, 14.8 horsepower bike that has throwback styling. “They’re nice little bikes. I think they’d sell. I’d stock that model,” Coppolella said. “It reminds me of a CB125 Honda.”

The “Motorcycle Classics” story also related how Taiwan-based SYM partnered with Honda in 1962 to build motorcycles for the Japanese company and eventually built cars for Honda as well. The joint venture was dissolved in 2002 but, over that 40-year span, SYM built millions of small Honda singles.

After seeing that story, RIDE-CT contacted Libby’s and also managed to reach Mike Hickman, national franchise manager and general manager for Alliance Powersports. He was showing off SYMs at a trade show in San Diego today.

“We started last fall (dealing with the state) in hopes of selling bikes in the springtime,” Hickman said. However, after sending the state a check for more than $2,000 last September and after dealing with the bureaucracy, he’s now thoroughly frustrated.

“We deal with every state in the country. They are the most difficult to deal with in the nation and the most expensive by far. In a tough economy, you’d think the state would be a little more accommodating. The state had us jumping through hoop after hoop after hoop. Two or three things they’d ask for, and they’d ask for four more,” Hickman reported.

When or if the Wolf Classic 150 ever makes it to Libby’s depends on the state. “We’re losing interest fast in doing business in the state of Connecticut, I’ll tell you that now,” Hickman said.

The loss of SYM would deprive Connecticut riders of an attractive entry-level machine. In the “Motorcycle Classics” story, Richard Backus describes the Wolf as “a bike anyone can ride with ease,” a logical bike for a newbie as well as one that’s “equally fun for the experienced rider looking for something light and easy to toss around town, a reminder that bigger isn’t always better…”