Is The Honda Navi A Motorcycle Or Scooter? What To Know About This Pocket Bike

The Honda Navi is an excellent tool for getting around town. It's compact, stylish, and efficient. If you're looking for inexpensive transportation, the fact that the Navi starts at under $2,000 is certainly appealing – and a rating of over 100 miles per gallon means you'll save quite a bit at the pump as well. But how is it classified? Is it a scooter or a motorcycle, and what's the difference between the two?

On Honda's website, the Navi is listed in the "miniMOTO" section. But that doesn't help us make much of a distinction. The other bikes in that section are the Grom, the Monkey, the Trail 125, and the Super Cub. The Grom, Monkey, and Trail could certainly be classified as mini bikes or small motorcycles, but the Cub feels much more like a scooter. So, what is the dividing line between a motorcycle and a scooter? It's not a cut-and-dried metric, so here's how the Navi stacks up.

Before we draw a strict line between what is and isn't a motorcycle, let's look at some of the Navi's stats. It's powered by a 109-cc engine. It's 71.1 inches long and 28.9 inches wide. That's small enough to fit in any parking spot with room to spare. It isn't small enough to be a trunk bike like the Motocompo, but the Navi is pretty light at just 234 pounds, and according to Honda, that includes "all standard equipment, required fluids and full tank of fuel."

According to the owner's manual, the Navi's maximum weight capacity is 344 pounds, so if there's a rider and a passenger, their gear must be kept to a minimum. The more likely scenario is that Navi owners will be riding around solo, potentially with a backpack or a few bags of groceries at most.

Finally, while the Navi's top speed isn't very impressive, Honda estimates its fuel economy at an impressive 110 mpg. The fuel tank capacity is less than one gallon, though (0.92 gallons to be exact), so you aren't likely to take the Navi on any long-distance road trips. All these stats seem to influence a decision to place the Navi in the scooter category but don't be too hasty.

Some say that the dividing line between motorcycle and scooter is drawn by the engine size. Anything larger than 250cc is a motorcycle and anything smaller is a scooter. Scooters like the Vespa GTS 300 and motorcycles like the CRF110F though, would be exceptions to those rules – just two of many bikes that fall outside that arbitrary range, so let's try another avenue.

Some differentiate scooters from motorcycles by the transmission — automatic transmission on two wheels means it's a scooter. But plenty of automatic-transmission two-wheelers qualify as motorcycles and offer a motoring experience worth having. So, that's not the best determining factor either.

Last on the list of theories: how you sit on the bike determines if it's a motorcycle or a scooter. Do your feet sit on opposite sides of the engine? Are there footpegs? Is there room for a passenger on the back? That's a motorcycle. A flat floor that you can easily swing your legs through as you enter – that's a scooter. This is one of the strongest arguments as to why a Vespa isn't a motorcycle – and it helps us get a bit closer to an answer to the Navi dilemma. It might be small, cheap, efficient, and best-suited to riding around town, but you don't ride it like a scooter, so this little Honda should be considered a motorcycle — albeit a mini one.