Category: Vespa

Vintage Vespa(SM)

Steve at The Scooter Scoop was trolling the patent sites again, and learned that our friends at Piaggio & C. S.p.A. are hoping to protect the phrase “Vintage Vespa” as a service mark. Piaggio returned to America a decade ago and alienated their entire customer base with a schload of legal action against the small handful of shops and parts distributors that kept the Vespa brand name alive in their absence. A handful ended up paying big money to be certified as a “Vintage Vespa Restoration Center,” a designation which carried little weight and was soon forgotten. At the same time, Piaggio offered (for sale!) a catalog of vintage parts that they seemed unable to supply to their dealers in any sort of timely fashion. In the ten years since then, most of the few truly successful Vespa dealerships are back in the hands of scooter enthusiasts, including several that Piaggio tried to shut down back in ’99 in favor of snooty luxury car dealerships and boutiques. But many of the best vintage scooter repair shops still want nothing to do with Grande Azzuro.

If the request becomes reality, how can an unsanctioned repair shop (many of which have been in business much longer than PiaggioUSA) attract customers? “We fix postwar Italian monocoque 4-speed rotary-valve steel-bodied 2-stroke motorscooters” just doesn’t flow off the tongue. Our suggestion? Simply offer vintage Piaggio parts and service.”

“Tribute” Vespa for your Superyacht

We don’t throw the word “Yacht” around on 2strokebuzz very often, which is surprising since several maxiscooters could fairly be described as “yachts,” and VespaUSA seems to have been targeting yacht owners since 1999. But they’ve clearly been doing it wrong.

If you have been keeping up on your southern-hemisphere superyacht news, you’ll know that an outfit called Digital Veneer in New Zealand is offering a Limited Edition “Tribute” Vespa designed to max-out the pretentiousness of a regular Vespa LX50 by adding woodgrain-sublimated vinyl and some seafoam-colored upholstery. Like any good yacht, if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.

Via the facebook feed of the mighty Vespa Lexington. You probably know this, but @Scooterism and I were just saying the other day, Michael and Whit probably have their online presence nailed down better than just about any shop in the country and you should be copying everything they do, from the attractive and up-to-date website, to the customer photos on the blog, to the great tweets and facebook posts, to sending 2strokebuzz free t-shirts. Especially that last part.

Vinashin Motor’s Diamond Blue 125

There’s already a long trail of modern Vespa knockoff attempts. Chinese manufacturers and importers have adorned their trade show booths and spam emails with primitive Fiberglas approximations and photoshopped mockups of Pontedera pretenders for years. The SYM Fiddle began life as a computer rendering of a Vespa LX in a Dealer Expo brochure. Even LML is allegedly developing the “Clipper,” an Indian ET4 clone.

But our new (unpaid, sorry!) Dutch correspondent David V. discovered a Vietnam-market scooter that takes the cake, the Vinashin Motor Diamond Blue 125 copies the Vespa LX right down to the hexagon badge cutout on the legshield. Amazingly, this design plagiarism isn’t even the most controversial aspect of the scooter.
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Piaggio’s New Business Plan

Piaggio announced a new business plan today:

The plan is focused on new industrial plants in India and in Vietnam, on strengthening the commercial presence in Asian markets via new products and on development of new technologies for European and American markets…”

This clearly breaks the paradigm and thinks outside the box of Piaggio’s 2007 plan to build more scooters in India and Vietnam and Brazil, while strengthening their commercial presence in Asian markets via new products and on development of new technologies for European and American markets.

Colaninno is surely a visionary, but I bet I can predict his 2012 plan: Piaggio will manufacture more different scooters, and sell them to people, at a profit — wait for it — around the world! If we’re all lucky, that may still include the United States

Scooter Superstore
and the Beginning of the End

On July 27, Scooter Superstore of America, a Ft. Lauderdale-based chain with several dealerships in Florida and Georgia, filed for bankruptcy. While many shops have closed their doors lately, and individual importers have faced some unique problems, SSTAM’s trouble could be–pardon the tired idiom–the straw that breaks the industry’s back.
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and the Beginning of the End”

Vespa Vigilantes?

A Brooklyn couple chased down a 13-year-old cell phone thief on their Vespa last week. The NY Post, of course, calls them “heroes,” and it’s a great story, but it just reminds us of that time our man Larry almost got jumped by an entire street gang after chasing a couple teenagers down the alley behind the California Clipper on his Lambretta. Your insurance agent won’t be thrilled when you total your bike and end up in the hospital, either. (Password-protect your phone, the information therein can be more valuable than the phone itself, or a Vespa!)

“Better than French Beer”

That’s our proposed tagline for Peroni, but 2sbBrandPartners didn’t get the account, so they end up with this: director Gabriele Muccino’s film Senza Tiempo, an Italian film for an Italian beer company about making Italian films for an Italian beer company. Meta! As required by Italian film law, there’s an obligatory Vespa VBB and Fiat 500. (at 1:40). More background (and a better quality video) at Peroni’s site if you can find it through the age verifications and Flash nonsense (don’t get sidetracked by the “Vespa” link that goes nowhere Vespa-related).

I’m so glad I work only nominally in the advertising industry.

Thanks for the link, Bradley J.!

PiaggioUSA: 75% drop in 1H 2010 unit sales

Guido Ebert apparently dug deeper into Piaggio’s 1H 2010 financial reports than we did, the mildly encouraging press release (28% improvement in global profit for the first half of 2010 on the strength of Indian and Vietnamese sales) fails to mention a frightening drop in the U.S. market: a 76.7% drop in 2-wheeler sales in the first half of the year (3,100 units in 1H 2010, down from 13,200 in 2009).

#22: Bit by the Vintage Bug

Today’s question for Dr. Buzz (the “panel of experts” is still M.I.A.) comes from Katy D. in California. Katy owned a Honda Metropolitan in the past but…

…I always wanted a vintage Vespa but the price was not right. Now I can afford one, but am leery of venturing into unknown territory…

Continue reading “#22: Bit by the Vintage Bug”

Play the Burger King® “The Twilight Saga:
Eclipse” Game, win a Vespa

Do it. Now. If I was guaranteed a free Vespa, I might eat at Burger King and go see a Twilight movie. “I Love You Man,” “Transformers,” it’s like they know all my favorite movies. I’m looking forward to the “Eat a live scorpion, then see your grandmother naked, win a Vespa” promotion.

Farewell, John Gerber

I’ve just heard that John Gerber has passed away. As an active participant in the U.S. scooter scene since “the old days,” John was the preeminent historian of American scootering history, collecting his own memories, first-person accounts, and laboriously-researched stories for American Scooterist. He was frankly the heart and soul of the Vespa Club of America. Aside from that, I have no details at all, but I’ll share the information when I get it, and a proper tribute when I’m less speechless.

2-Tone “Campus” Vespa S in U.S.

Patrick confirms (with the photo above) that the two-tone Vespa S ie models (called “College” in Europe) are now available in the U.S. (Specifically at Motoworks Chicago. Or at least they were a week ago when he emailed us. The new colors (red/white and blue/white) are listed on VespaUSA’s site in in both “S” displacements. Also, a new LXV is available in a color Patrick called “Tobacco,” but Vespa lists it as “Espresso” (The seat leather may be called “Tobacco?”) Anyway, good to see some sharp new colors from Vespa, actually available in the U.S. roughly the same time as Europe.