Honda’s classic Motocompo is beloved by car journalists, JDM enthusiasts, and anyone else with an affinity for weird transportation. When its successor, the Motocompacto, was released, we all rejoiced — finally, a tiny little fold-up scooter for the modern era. Plenty of us Jalops even considered getting one for ourselves.
But then, the market hit. Like the PlayStation 5 and Nvidia 3090 before it, the Motocompacto has been besieged by scalpers — resellers listing the scooters on Facebook Marketplace for hundreds more than their MSRP from Honda. Every week, as I search for the web’s Dopest Cars, I see posting after posting for Motocompactos, all with a healthy profit margin baked in for the seller.
What’s odd about this is that Motocompactos don’t seem to be in short supply. I can head over to Honda’s store right now and add one to my cart, without any warnings about inventory issues or lead times. I’ve reached out to Honda to see if there are any supply constraints behind the scenes, but haven’t yet heard back.
Honda’s dealers, however, seem to have somewhat ready access to new scooters. I called three nearby dealers, and while two didn’t quite seem to know what the Motocompacto was, the third had a demo unit ready to try and said they’d be getting more scooters in by the end of February. I know I’d rather wait two months than pay one and a half times MSRP, but maybe some folks are just impatient.
Normally scalpers show up when an item is in short supply, artificially constraining that supply further to eke some profit out, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Are they just hoping people don’t know how to get their hands on a Motocompacto for MSRP, that the buy-online-pick-up-in-dealer process is too complicated? Are they relying on those early reports of canceled orders and low production, hoping that people aren’t up to date on the more stable supply chain we have today? It seems only one thing is for sure: I want one so so bad and Rory won’t let me expense it.