Kymco Motorcycles

Published: March 30th, 2023

Updated March 2021
Kymco is best known in the US for making sometimes funky but always functional and affordable scooters, ranging in size from the $1,849 Agility 50 all the way up to the new $8,999 AK550 luxury scooter – with a whole range of other scooters in between.

The new AK550 gets a 53-horsepower, 550cc DOHC parallel Twin.

The Taiwan manufacturer also produces a couple of small motorcycles, the K-Pipe 125 and the Spade 150 (no, we don't know where they get the names), as well as a huge range of ATVs from the Mongoose 70 kid's sport model all the way up to the MXU 700i LE utility beast.

K-Pipe 125!

Side-by-sides? But of course. There are four versions of the UXV 450i, and four UXV 700i models, the UXV 700i LE EPS topping the line, at $10,749.

Many Kymcos bear a strong resemblance to more expensive brands, which makes plenty of sense because when the company was founded in 1963, it started out making parts for Honda. By 1970, Kymco (Kwang Yang Motor Co, Ltd) had produced its first scooter, and in 1992 began using the KYMCO brand name. Kymco has working relationships with companies like Kawasaki, BMW, Arctic Cat and Textron, and has built vehicles or parts of vehicles including engines, either for, or in collaboration with all of them.

Wikipedia says KYMCO's headquarters and factory are located in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, with about 3000 employees, and the company produces more than 570,000 vehicles per year. It also has production facilities in Jakarta, Indonesia; Petaling, Java, Malaysia – and two factories in China. Since it began production all those years ago, Kymco says it's sold over 6 million vehicles in over 100 countries around the globe.

In the US, KYMCO USA maintains a small sales, marketing, and distribution center in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from which it serves over 500 dealers nationwide. It doesn't seem to serve Motorcycle.com at all, though, since we haven't tested a Kymco lately or heard from the company since about 2017.

Still, Kymco makes solid products, and there's a handy dealer locator at kymcousa.com.