An excerpt from a Martha Stewart book:
Another entrepreneur whose intensity, curiosity, research, and devotion to quality impress me is a gentleman who first flagged me down on an East Hampton back road several years ago. I had decided to go for a ride on my turquoise Velocifero scooter and was zipping along when I heard a shout “Yo, Martha!” Across the street on his own turquoise scooter was Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rap star who used to be called Puff Daddy and then P. Diddy.
Thanks for the photo, Dawson.
Other than it’s reliability shortcomings, the Velo rocks as far as modern scooter design goes.
Well, it was nice that it had a metal frame, and it was rather cool looking, but designwise, it’s really just a ripoff of the Vespa with a few modernizations. Funny that it looks more like a Vespa than Vespas do nowadays.
The real question: How much money did Diddy and Martha save on gas?
“Artsy-farts have more baggage than Samsonite, those ancient Hamptonites, they’re always like, ‘I can’t tonight’.”
The fact that it looks more like a vespa than modern vespas do, is the genius of the design. They took a design, and made an engine for it and put storage where there was space left over. That’s the way it should be done. Instead, they have an engine line, an irrational need for a 1.5 gallon dead space and then design something around those things. With the velo you got ‘vintage style’ and modern conveniences in a small form. Now we get ‘vintage inspired’, bloated battle ships.
Actually if you removed the horn cast on the velocifero you even saw the stampout on the metal where the piaggio emblem would go had it been an actual vespa. I always wondered if they had bought an earlier legshield press to use as a part of the manufacturing process. That stamp wasn’t there for any other reason. I too really liked the velo minus the horrible service record.
I believe it was a bajaj press.
The Martha & Diddy Scooter Club – Turquoise Velocifero’s ONLY, Dues are $50k a year and you MUST have a home in the Hamptons. (Bodyguards on other color Velo’s acceptable for rides – but they cannot be official members, only honorary if injured by being hit by a SUV while lane blocking.)