After 16 years of scootering and 2strokebuzz, it’s easy to forget what attracted me to the machines and people that make up this dumb subbacultcha. If the first third of this video doesn’t make you want to stay up all night prepping your bike for a 5am, 250-mile rideout with some friends, there’s something wrong with you.

To our newish friend Bo and our oldish friend Bart, who shared the link on the facebooks, thanks for the reminder!

SIP Scooter Shop shared a video on their Facebook page today. It is a National Geographic program clip about the Piaggio factory in Pontedera. The video has a few shots of vintage machines in their museum. But one of the views that appealed to me was the factory building tucked in the Tuscan hills shown in the background of the test ride shots. I don’t know if the buildings are the same, but it was reminiscent of those old aerial photos of the factory from the 1950s. Other parts show the processes involved in the building of their larger engines (What are they doing tossing crankshaft halves into big vats of rocks?!) and the assembly of the MP3 hybrid scooter. Not a 2-stroke in sight. I wonder where they build those? I focus on the visual aspects of the video because it’s all in Italian, a language I do not understand. If anyone wants to translate any remarkable points of what looks to be a standard factory tour for the kind of shows that used to make the Discovery Channel great before they jumped the shark, feel free to post below.

Now of course, Innocenti did build Minis (and a variety of other cars) back in the day, we’re not experts in this area of scooter-related arcana, but all the examples we’ve ever seen bore the hybrid British Leland/Innocenti logo. BLMC licensed the Mini design to Innocenti in 1961, and the Italians had great success with their arguably-superior version of the British original. BLMC bought Innocenti outright in 1972, just as Lambretta production ceased. Shortly later, Innocenti closed up shop for good, and BLMC went bankrupt in 1975. DeTomaso revived the brand name shortly later, while BLMC became part of the Rover group.

Innocenti-badged cars have been produced as recently as the late 90s, in Europe and Brazil, seemingly with Daihatsu, Fiat, and even Yugo connections. Leyland’s “Mini” trademark went to Rover and then to BMW, but the ownership of the Innocenti name is unclear. In any case, even if the Innocenti name is legit (and we all know that even if the maker honestly believes they’ve legally secured the trademark, there’s always someone waiting to prove them wrong) we’d guess BMW would have something to say about the use of the “Mini wings,” obviously implying a Mini pedigree. It’s all conjecture at this point, and the vehicle is probably far more exciting to scooter historians than to actual motorists.

Also of note: at 2:24 there’s an e-Schwalbe for all you Fuji Rabbit/Zundapp Bella (or vintage Simson Schwalbe) fans, and at 5:25 there’s the electric single-headlight I*****t Velocifero that you probably shouldn’t get too excited about.

From the Lambretta Motorcycles Facebook page, here is a video that even the exclusive vintage Lambretta lover could enjoy. Maybe a common enemy can be the tie that binds? Doubtful.

PR agency Life Longari & Loman’s nicely done glamour reel of the new Lambretta LN, with narration in Italian (and confirmation that Alessandro Tartarini designed it).

(Thanks to reader David Davidson for the link!)

Generally I like to go on at great length about these, but it’s five minutes to Thursday and I have a lot of American Scooterist work to do still. More importantly, I don’t know jack about these guys aside from what I see on their Myspace page. They’re English, they’ve been plugging away at it since 2005, and this video is from circa 2008. The video’s got a good chunk of joyful P-series Vespa riding footage shot with a secret prototype Holga Super-8 camera and cross-processed for a nice vintage look.

This video just couldn’t wait for Vespa Video Vednesday. Via one of our new Des Moines Facebook homies, Matt Baker.

And it’s popular enough to have a remix:

And if you’re excited about the 200cc Stella (which isn’t due in the U.S. anytime soon, we hear) check this out: PJ found a video of a top-secret new LML model.

Eric catches video of NoHo Scooters’ Mike Frankovich helping Tom Hanks start his Riva at the L.A. Larry Crowne premiere last night. Despite what the uptight publicist in the foreground is thinking, this fragment of cinéma vérité will almost surely be Larry Crowne’s most memorable contribution to scootering legend, and will endear Tom Hanks to all scooterists forever. And I’m not being snarky for once.

Tonight is the Chicago premiere, see you there! The movie opens Friday nationwide, our Larry Crowne contest runs through Saturday.

But if, like many consumers, you’re looking to buy two $6000 scooters (and accoutrements, see below) to add to your fleet of 2 SUVs, and you’re only going to ride them on weekends and the occasional nice day because you live in Minnesota where it’s snowing 3/4 of the year and you have a toddler and a first-grader, the gas-savings argument doesn’t make sense. And note (woman in POC video above) that two scooters, obviously, get half the mileage of one scooter, if you’re buying 2 60mpg scooters, is that saving gas over driving together in a 30mpg car?

Keep in mind MPG figures on scooters are generally somewhat inflated when compared to real-world use (though technology continues to improve mileage and manufacturers seem to be a little more honest latley). Also note that at around 60-80mpg the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

So do the math, and be sure to consider cost of ownership of a scooter, including the bike, insurance, taxes and titles, registration, local permits, maintenance, storage, and gear (helmets, jackets, gloves, rain gear, chamois, covers, decal kits, topboxes, windscreens, crash bars, flags, helmet cams, reupholstered custom seat, scooter club memberships, little 8-ball valve covers, trailer rentals, trailer hitch installation, camping gear, tolls, booze, tools, sidecars, pregnancy tests, gremlin bells, can of corn, etc.

Then just stop waffling and buy the damn thing, you’ll love it. But don’t expect to save a lot of money unless you’re changing your lifestyle. There are lots of people trying to sell you things to make you feel more green or feel like you’re saving money, but the only way to really save money and the environment is diet and exercise. Wait, that’s not right…

*POCPhil is one of our oldest friends, a contributor to this site, and one of the very few men I’ve ever kissed. He’s also a dealer, and dealers love hyperbole, and the media loves to distill hyperbole into metahyperbole that fits the story they’ve written before they interview anyone. Phil is also running the American Motor Scooter Association, a dealer trade organization, so he’s surely going to be a scooter-industry PR machine this summer. He’s already followed up this TV appearance with a quote in the Roanoke paper. He’s an asset to both dealers and consumers, as he always has.

On a cool Northampton afternoon a small pack of thieves armed with sledge hammers attack a jewelry store with their accomplices awaiting their bounty on get-away scooters. Enter a fine citizen with her shopping bag loaded with what must have been bricks. The woman, seen in the video, charges down the street and scares off the criminals who clumsily try to make tracks. During their exit one of the gang was knocked off their scooter and was able to be pinned down until police arrived. Video shows that the rider who didn’t get a way was riding a Vespa LXV. A sad end for a fine scooter. The hero of the day remained un-named by news reports. Modesty prevails.

The New York Post report