Category: Piaggio

Overzip?

Motoring.co.za reviews Piaggio’s new Zip 100. The Zip 50 is hugely popular in Europe and Piaggio’s most affordable scooter, but is the new 100cc engine too big for the bike? (We’ll have a comment from Brooke within the hour with a resounding “no!,” and some whining about how it’s not available here.)

The Maltese Vespa

Piaggio’s importer and distributor for Malta, M. Demajo & Co. Ltd, announced a special financial assistance program for students. Demajo is also lobbying the government to cut registration tax on scooters, and working with transportation and police authorities. Worldwide, Piaggio is seeking new ways to promote the many benefits of scootering, though in Malta they seem to have bypassed PiaggioUSA’s vague pseudo-political ‘petition’ and are instead taking direct politico-socio-economic action. To be fair, that’s probably a lot easier in a nation of less than a half-million where scooters are already popular.

More news from PiaggioUSA’s dealer meeting

Dan Kay of Old Towne Motocycle Shoppe has confirmed, as we reported Monday, that the U.S. version of the Piaggio MP3 three-wheeled scooter will feature Piaggio’s 250cc electronic-fuel-injected QUASAR engine, the same engine found in the Vespa GTS. Kay also confirmed that Piaggio was for some reason unable to use the name “MP3” in the U.S., and no name has been chosen yet: “Europe wants alpha-numeric, Americans would prefer a name.” The renamed MP3 will arrive at U.S. Vespa dealers in March or April 2007. Kay’s impression:

Very interesting! The integrated trunk with seat pass-through is a nice touch. The front suspension with the electronic stabilizer is trick, [and] the extra front wheel feels a lot less squirrely on grooved pavement and metal grates. Most people won’t steer as agressively to notice that a GTS is a bit more maneuverable.

In other news from the meeting:

  • Piaggio/Vespa MSRP price increases will take effect on November 1.
  • PiaggioUSA will soon announce the 60th anniversary models. Only 250 individually-numbered GT60s will be sold in the U.S. The bikes feature grey paint to match the original Vespa MP6 prototype, with a fender light and a leather seat. Other goodies include a wallet, key fob, book, and custom satin cover. The owner’s initials will be engraved on a silver plate mounted to the scooter. The 60th-anniversary GTV and LXV models will be a darker “Aveo Grey” with brown leather seats and retro-style speedometers. MSRP for the LXV is $5199, so we figure the GT60 is one of those things where, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
  • Kay tells us Piaggio has more new models on the horizon, but he isn’t sharing, as “to not take attention away from the three-wheeler.” Fair enough.
  • Aprilia’s new big-wheeled Sportcity 250 features the same Quasar engine as the MP3 and the GTS. It’ll come to the U.S. halfway through 2007, in the “mid fours.” The Aprilia Mojito 150 will also return to the U.S, at a new lower price in the “mid-threes.”

PiaggioUSA dealer meeting: photos

A few photos of the first Piaggio MP3 in America, at the Piaggio Dealer meeting in San Antonio today. Dealers had the chance to see and ride the new MP3. No confirmation from our source yet on which model is coming, or if the name will be changed for the US market (Prior to the meeting, PiaggioUSA had been referring to it as “Piaggio Three Wheeler.” Catchy!) More info to come!

US MP3 due in early 2007, more “tilters” in the works.

Good news and bad news for American fans of the Piaggio MP3: Despite promises to deliver the three-wheeler by December, and reports that the American version will be unveiled to dealers at Piaggio’s October dearler meeting, CNN reports the scooter won’t arrive until first-quarter 2007. Worse news; it will sell for a somewhat-ridiculous $7000. The good news is the model described by CNN is the 4-stroke, 4-valve 250cc Quasar engine with electronic fuel injection (earlier reports suggested we’d get the 125cc LEADER version).

Piaggio really seems to be marketing this thing to — as CNN says — “those who are simply afraid of falling over.” I continue to suspect that while the MP3 is likely somewhat better-handling than most two-wheelers, anyone afraid to ride a motorcycle or scooter is going to feel just as terrified on an MP3 the moment the wheels are unlocked from parking position. We also wonder whether the MP3’s size and weight will further intimidate such people, or inspire car-like confidence.

Thanks for the link from Mad Man Maddox, who also points us to some other exciting three-wheeled vehicles in the works.

News Briefs

I’m falling behind again, it must be the beginning of hockey season (and the launch of the Galewood Cookshack, more on that later).

The Trautwein-Roller: MP3 in 1984?

The Trautwein-Roller

Check out Marcus Kabst’s fantastic history of the Trautwein-Roller: Is this proof that Piaggio’s groundbreaking MP3 three-wheeler is actually based on a design tested and patented 22 years ago? Here’s a very rough — and condensed — translation:

“Are scooters steered with two front wheels conceivable? If you subscribe to the ideas of inventor Wolfgang Trautwein, vehicles of this kind may soon appear on the streetscape. […] Dr. Wolfgang Trautwein, 53, engineer from Meersburg at the Bodensee, received two original Vespa scooters in the middle of 1984 from Piaggio from Genova, in order to build prototypes. [This concept was] suggested by [Trautwein,] using the Vespa platform, exactly three decades after the first Motorcycle was equipped with a double-front chassis. Under their hoods, the Vespa tricycles hide the newest variant of the Trautwein front axle for motorcycles, a parallelogram axle […] Thus, the scooter effectively avoids wheel-flutter. […] The suspension is arranged so that the wheels do not only turn when rolling, but also tilt. The floorboards of the Vespa are firmly connected to the lower parallelogram, and follow its movements. […] Trautwein stresses that this changed style of driving comes relatively easily to the driver. And according to Trautwein’s statements, the chassis offers some safety advantages: Decreased hazard of front end slip on wet pavement, rails, etc. Safer braking, and improved cornering. Better handling. […] Space for a trunk over the front axle. […] Also, the comfort is quite convincing.”

So if the translation is marginally close, it appears Piaggio assisted in the development of, but did not produce, an MP3-like version of the Vespa PK 125 and a PX 200 more than two decades ago. They even filed patents for the design. Judging by the photos, at least one working prototype of each version was made. The PX200 model sported hydraulic disc brakes — twelve years before they became standard on the PX200. Amazing. (Thanks for another great link, POCphil. Note that there’s also some great info on Marcus’ page about other three-wheelers and similar concept scooters.)

The Piaggio IPO: A timeline

for those of you who (like us) have the business sense
of a six-year-old running a lemonade stand:

1999: The Agnelli Family (best known for running Fiat into the ground) sells Piaggio, with whom they also worked their magic, to Morgan Grenfell Private Equity (part of DeutscheBank). Morgan Grenfell brings Vespa back to America and loses even more money.

October 2003: Morgan Grenfell sells a chunk of Piaggio, near-bankruptcy, to Immsi, an investment company run by Roberto Colaninno, an extremely rich and powerful Italian businessman famous for paying €60 billion for Telecom Italia. He pays €100 millions for about a third of Piaggio and permission to have his way with her. Colaninno brings in Rocco Sabelli as CEO and they start turning things around, kinda like Michael Keaton and Gedde Watanabe in “Gung Ho.”
Continue reading “The Piaggio IPO: A timeline”