Category: Scooter News

New Vespa Museum opens in Ravenna

If you’re headed to Italy this summer, and you’ve seen the Piaggio Museum three times already, check out Mauro Pascoli’s recently-opened Vespa Museum in Ravenna. Apparently the Massimiliano Fuksas-designed “cloud” museum hovering over the Pontedera assembly line (that was supposed to be finished last year) was just 60th-anniversary P.R. bullshit.
(See also: Machine-translated story from Repubblica.it via Motoblog.it.)

Piaggio USA names new PR firm

Looks like Piaggio USA won’t have Access Communications to kick around anymore. Hard to believe anyone could be worse than CooperKatz, who botched the “Vespa Blogs” idea, but you’ve also gotta wonder why the current glut of scooter stories are practically ignoring Piaggio products to talk about the 100mpg Buddy. Oh, wait we just answered our own question there. Anyway, if Brandware can increase the Vespa’s fuel efficiency*, lower the price, and improve the parts supply, and give dealers more realistic terms and margins… Good luck, Brandware.

*Place your bets on the exact date Vespa’s fuel efficiency rating is ‘recalculated’ to be more competitive with other scooters. (Alternately, guess how long it takes before the hybrid MP3 becomes the centerpiece of their campaign, despite the fact that $10/gallon gas wouldn’t drive an American to buy an $8000 hybrid three-wheeled scooter.)

Yes, I Am A Geek: Yamaha Vino Gadget Overload

What ever your choice of epithet for those who embrace some sort of technical esotericism, get ready to shout it right..about…now!

But in all seriousness, this Yamaha Vino 50 crammed with all kinds of electronic gizmo goodness is pretty cool.  I think it could be done much more cleanly with better physical integration, but that’s what the fellows at MP3car.com get to do when they get it all tightly installed in their cars with much more real estate to work with.

via Gizmodo

Piaggio stock drops

It’s always the day after a new product release, right? Piaggio’s stock dropped 2.8 percent after an announcement that the company’s quarterly profit was down 21%. Bobby C. tempered the announcement with plans for a stock buyback, and promised Piaggio’s gas/electric hybrid MP3 will be released in October this year (Piaggio unveiled the prototype hybrid MP3 last July).

Do the scooter math

Based on these sources (1, 2) and a little bit of guesswork, the average American uses about 500 gallons of gas per year. That means the difference between $3/gallon gas and $4/gallon gas is costing the average American roughly $500 this year. I realize $500 is a lot of money to some people, and budgets are tight, and some people have to drive a lot more than others. And I love scooters and think everyone should ride them, for lots of reasons. But is buying a scooter really the best way to save money on gas?

If you’re considering a scooter in place of a second car, or to entirely replace your decaying gas-guzzling SUV, then it probably is. But if you’re thinking of adding a scooter to your existing fleet, please do the math. calculate how much gas you use in a year. calculate the REAL mileage of your car, and the REAL mileage of your proposed scooter, and what percentage of the time you’ll really be using the scooter. Calculate the title and tax fees for the scooter, and financing (if any) and insurance, safety gear, and maintenance. Chances are, your helmet, jacket, and topbox will cost more than than the extra dollar per gallon you’d spend on gas if you just kept driving your car.

Spending money to save money is a popular American pastime (e.g. buying a Kitchen Aid mixer reasoning you’ll eat out less, or the scary trend of “Earth Day Sales”). Numbers can be twisted to make you believe anything, but don’t trust them unless you’re the one doing the math, filling the blanks with your own, honest, real-world, data. Change your lifestyle and your consumption over time and you’ll see savings, but don’t go out and finance a $5000 60mpg Vespa at 28% APR to ride on sunny weekends, because your interest on the loan is going to cost you more than the few hundred bucks you’ll save on gas. If you want it and you can afford it, get it, it’s goodtimes, believe me, but don’t blame the Saudis for your attraction to Italian industrial design.

If you really want to save some money, look at your cable bill. It’s fair to say oil companies are reaming us and the government needs to step in, but no one seems to mind paying $1000 a year for television.

* one source says 464 gallons a year in 2004, the other says 431 in 2003, I added several gallons under the assumption that consumption has risen on the same pace in the past four years.

Huuuugs! Achewood Vespa for sale!

OMG OMG OMG! I heart Achewood. I heart scooters. I’ve been lusting after this Vespa Rally that Chris Onstad painted for years. Now, that very scooter is for sale in the scoot.net classifieds, and it’s going to pretty much take everything I’ve got to not call the dude. Thanks a lot, Matt.

A personal note to dude selling the bike: Please send me more photos, and then tell me it’s already been sold so I can stop thinking about it. Then post it on eBay Platinum Reserve where it belongs.