India has never really had a performance scooter. The quickest scooter you can buy in a showroom today is a 155cc Yamaha Aerox or a 150cc TVS Ntorq, and both stop where a 160cc motorcycle begins. Italjet is about to rewrite that arithmetic, and it is doing it with a machine that looks like it escaped from a motorcycle show.
The Italian brand unveiled its Dragster line-up for India at EICMA 2026 in Milan, Autocar India reported, and the Italjet Dragster India launch is now fixed for December 4 at India Bike Week in Panchgani. Three models are coming in phases: the Dragster 300, the Dragster 459 and the Dragster 700. All three will be assembled at Motohaus India’s plant in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, with customer deliveries starting in the second quarter of 2027.
Three scooters, three very different answers
The entry point is the Dragster 300, and even that is not really an entry-level machine. It runs a 278cc liquid-cooled single making 23.8hp at 8,250rpm and 26Nm at 6,250rpm, Autocar India reports. That is more power than most 200cc motorcycles on Indian roads, in a scooter with a 770mm seat height and an 11-litre fuel tank. Brembo brakes, a 240mm front disc, a 175mm rear disc and dual-channel ABS are standard.
The middle model is where the line-up gets serious. The Dragster 459 uses a 449cc liquid-cooled parallel twin producing 47.58hp at 9,500rpm and 41Nm at 8,000rpm, paired with a six-speed gearbox, Autocar India reports. It gets a fully adjustable upside-down fork and monoshock from Marzocchi, 15-inch wheels with Pirelli tyres, Brembo brakes with twin 270mm front discs, and traction control as standard. Its 16-litre tank is bigger than some motorcycles carry.
Then there is the Dragster 700, the flagship. Its 698cc liquid-cooled twin makes 70hp and 70Nm, Autocar India reports, with a six-speed gearbox and the same Marzocchi suspension and Brembo hardware as the 459. All three models come with full LED lighting and a TFT instrument cluster, and buyers can add heated grips and an anti-theft system as options. A 24-month manufacturer warranty is standard.
The price question nobody can answer yet
Here is the awkward part. Motohaus has not announced Indian prices for any of the three, and it will not do so until the December debut. The only hard numbers available are the British prices, which Autocar India converted: the Dragster 300 costs GBP 6,380, roughly Rs 8.08 lakh, the 459 is GBP 9,100, about Rs 11.53 lakh, and the 700 is GBP 11,937, close to Rs 15.13 lakh.
Those figures will almost certainly not survive the trip to Kolhapur. Local assembly usually pulls prices down a long way from the imported equivalent, and ZigWheels currently estimates the Dragster 300 at around Rs 5 lakh and the 700 at Rs 12 lakh. Both are portal estimates, not company figures, so treat them as a rough band rather than a promise. The honest answer is that the Dragster 300 will probably land somewhere between a premium 350cc motorcycle and a small imported adventure bike, and that is a strange place for a scooter to live.
That strangeness is the point, though. The Dragster 459 makes 47.58hp, which is within a whisker of the 48hp of the BMW F 450 GS Sport, a motorcycle that costs Rs 5.90 lakh. A scooter matching a middleweight adventure bike on power, with Brembo brakes and a trellis frame, is not a commuter with pretensions. It is a different category trying to exist in India for the first time, and the buyer it wants is the rider who loves scooters for their ease but has outgrown what scooters can do.
What happens between now and December
Motohaus is not a new name in this business. The Kolhapur distributor already handles Brixton Motorcycles and VLF scooters in India, Autocar India notes, so the Dragster is not arriving on a wing and a prayer. The company plans dedicated Italjet retail centres in seven cities in the first phase: Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi and Hyderabad, GaadiWaadi reports. The Italjet Dragster India launch also opens the official waitlist on the Motohaus website in December.
The timing is deliberate. India Bike Week on December 4 and 5 is the one event where this machine makes sense as a debut, because the crowd there is exactly the audience that will argue about a 700cc scooter over a beer. The Honda Rebel 300 has just started reaching Indian buyers, and the premium two-wheeler market is clearly in a mood to try new shapes. Italjet is betting that mood extends to scooters.
If the pricing lands near the lower estimates, the Dragster 300 could become the most interesting conversation in the scooter market in years. If it lands near the British prices, it becomes a curiosity for a handful of buyers. Either way, the Italjet Dragster India launch on December 4 is the date that decides which one it is, and for once the scooter world has something worth waiting for.