#vespa

The Model Year 2019 show season is fully underway, and so far, we’ve seen some exciting news. It began in Intermot with the unveiling of new models from Aprilia, Ducati, Indian, Kawasaki, KTM, Suzuki, and Triumph. Then the focus turned to Las Vegas, NV, and the AIMExpo where Motorcycle.com was on-hand to witness the unveiling of the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R and other offerings from the motorcycle industry as a whole.

Yes, $10,000 is still a lot of money, but it’s not 1973 anymore and you really do get a lot of motorcycle for that much now. No, buying new is not the most economical way to go, but a lot of people have no choice. Besides, interest rates are at historical lows, and the fact is that brand-new bikes are about as easy to take care of as a Toyota Camry. For every old guy who misses carburetors and “wrenching,” there are five or 10 young ones out riding around happily oblivious to what they’re missing. Listen, I’m wearing socks older than most of you, but when it comes to motorcycles, new is good. Here are are my personal top 10, from least to most expensive.

After first announcing the Vespa Elettrica project at EICMA a year ago, the electric Vespa is now ready for production, with Piaggio confirming it will be available worldwide, with orders being accepted in the spring.

Vespa is proud to introduce a new model to their scooter lineup, The Sei Giorni. The new release from the famed Italian scooter company is designed to pay homage to the 1951 Vespa Sport Squadra Corse that won a gold medal, not once, but nine individual times in that year’s International Six Days Enduro (ISDE) held in Varese. The ISDE is a grueling test of the limits of both man and machine in an off-road environment. The completion awards bronze for merely completing the event in the allotted time. The more elusive silver is awarded to riders that finish within 25% of the class-winning time and the gold is awarded only to those that finish within the top 10%.

If you find yourself visiting Italy this year, be sure to stop in Florence to see a line of Vespas climbing the wall of the Gallery Hotel Art.

Dear MOby,

The first Vespa to bear the name Primavera, that’s “springtime” to you and me, made its first appearance in 1968 and was revolutionary: small, agile, powered by a brilliant engine. Primavera placed wings on several generations and was produced without interruption until 1982, making it one of the widest commercial successes in Vespa history. Its new incarnation is a star in its own time, says Vespa: Youthful, innovative, technologically ground-breaking, agile and dynamic, with an eye to the protection of the environment, inheriting all the freshness and joy of living from its predecessor.

It’s been a quiet year on the scooter front, as headlines have understandably gone towards more exciting models and categories of two-wheeling. The industry hasn’t offered much new in scootering this year, and by extension, neither have we. So it’s with this harsh reality that we announce the winner for our 2016 Best Scooter award… is the same as last year: The Vespa GTS 300 Super ABS.

To celebrate 70 years of Vespa, for 2016 the company is offering the Primavera, GTS and PX in an exclusive color scheme: the Azzurro 70. This unique paintwork  include a dark brown saddle, finished with contrasting beige piping and a Vespa Settantesimo logo placed on the passenger seat. The three Settantesimo models are also characterized by a dedicated graphic on the side fairings and an identification plate on the door of the front glove compartment. Lastly, the wheels are painted are painted in a non-standard color.

Three-hundred cubic centimeters or so is a very good size for a scooter; fast enough to get you anywhere while keeping you out of trouble, small enough to fit into tight spaces and ensure you keep a real motorcycle in the stable as well so as not to have your man (or woman!) card revoked. Vespa’s been building the GTS 300 since 2009. For 2015, it was brought to the next level with ABS and traction control – both of which are more useful than you might imagine on a thing that’s built to run the urban maze’s various congealing, damp and greasy surfaces on 12-inch wheels. And while they were upgrading, they gave the Vespa a new multimedia platform to connect a smartphone to the bike so you can track torque output, lean angle, and where you left the GTS parked. The seat was restyled, new instruments now use wheel-speed sensors instead of a cable. Many styling details have been updated, and a new, more powerful ECU runs everything.

You might remember a couple weeks back I wrote in my column that I was clocking out and going on vacation to Japan. The point was to refresh myself and recharge my batteries by doing something other than immersing myself in motorcycles 24/7. For the most part I was successful in that endeavor – the wife and I had a fantastic time in the land of the rising sun playing tourists for a week.

It really is a fine line between open-minded and cheap, between hip and hopeless, betwixt trending and tanking … and if you ride a scooter, you ride the razor’s edge, my friend. Obviously one has to be secure in one’s man or womanhood to even begin; my male college kid won’t be seen in the same garage with any scooter for fear it will dilute his musk. At the cool end of the scale, there’s our photographer/filmmaker/ballet dancer friend Richard Wright, who also finds time to head up the Bevery Hills Scooter Club and tear up Latigo Canyon on his bored-out Aprilia 250. At the other end, well, there’s yours truly on the Kymco Downtown 300i. How’s that for segue?

As far as scooters go, the Piaggio BV350 i.e. had me pretty excited. The reasoning is simple: its 330cc engine is the largest in this class (I don’t include the Suzuki Burgman 400 due to its maxi-scoot size and price), and Piaggio’s marketing materials highlighted it as being the best of both words – having the power of a bigger scoot with the maneuverability of a smaller one. If I may make this stretch of a comparison, the BV350 has a similar charm as the Suzuki GSX-R750 in that it feels like a hot-rodded version of a smaller bike without the restraint required on a bigger one.

The motorcycle show season continues in Milan, Italy, for EICMA, the World Motorcycle Expo. Last year’s show was fantastic, but the 2014 edition promises to be even more spectacular as EICMA celebrates its 100th anniversary.

Three things happen to me when I’m riding a scooter or motorcycle: I pay closer attention to the world, I taste a bit of riding freedom, and I get just a little bit smarter. At least that’s what I tell myself.