Slight Return

Well, whaddya know? Rumours have been circulating for months, but it looks like Piaggio really are going to start manufacturing the much-loved and much-missed Vespa PX again, in all its air-cooled, manual-gearboxed glory.

The last PXs were made by Piaggio in 2007. Officially, their demise was brought about by the engines not meeting emissions legislation. Apparently, the new incarnation will still have a two-stroke motor, with all the famous blue smoke (and particulates) kept in check by a new catalyser. There's also a mention in some of the press that the new scoot will have 'dual rear shocks', which might at last stop 'Vespa arse' on rides longer than half an hour.

SInce the last PXs were sold, anyone wanting a traditional scooter has been forced to get an Indian clone, the LML star*, which must surely have taken a significant chunk of Piaggio's market. No doubt this was a major factor in the decision to re-introduce the much-loved scooter, but whatever the reason - it's good to see it back. The new PX will be on sale next year - this is one of the new ones. Nice flares.



* one of LMLs main UK dealers is Eddy Bullet. They have the worst website you'll ever see. Go on, have a look.

Scootography

Yesterday I was in Brighton, "covering" - as we photographers say - the Brightona motorbike show. I was there for the scooters, specifically to photograph as many of them as possible in front of a certain gallery. These events being what they are, it was an exercise in rumour ("500 scooters on their way right now from Aldershot") and herding cats. Photographing scooters inevitably involves lots of crawling around on the floor, and I'm walking like i've got wooden legs today. Anyway, once the Money Shot was in the bag (or in the memory card, anyway) I was free to roam. Never seen so many Harleys. Nice bikes. If you're a girl.

Indian Gears

All over the world, anti-pollution legislation is killing off the two-stroke engine. This was one of the reasons given when Piaggio retired the geared Vespa - the much-loved PX - from their range of scooters.

"But what about a geared four-stroke model?" we wailed.

"Can't fit a 4T motor in the PX frame" came the retort.

"Oh yeah?" said India's LML.

Now the world's only producer of manual gearbox scooters, LML's version of the PX was originally built under licence from Piaggio. The two companies had a fallout in 1999 and went their own ways. The legal outcome is unclear (to me, anyway) but LML still produce PX clones. These are sold under the moniker of Star or Via Toscana in the UK and Australasia, and Stella in the US. Some heretics even claim they're better made than their latter-end Italian cousins.

So here's LML's four stroke Star. The frame had to be adapted to fit the engine, which looks like a cross between an extractor fan and the Terminator's digestive system. According to LML their new scooter is good for a quite staggering 179MPG. Every Vespisti is familiar with their steed being referred to as a sewing machine - and here's a scooter that really does sound like one.

The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

Everybody loves the Monroe lines of a classic scooter, most famously those of the GS model. Among the last of the curvaceous largeframes was the Rally, and the Sprint Veloce (my own beloved example 'Bella' is pictured here on a visit to North Weald Aerodrome), phased out with the introduction of the distinctly chunky P Range, from 1977. The P Range was the last manually-geared Italian scooter and continued in production until it was taken round the back of the EU Emissions office and shot by The Man in 2007. The Vespa range nowadays is a line up of excellent automatic transmission future-retro scoots, most of which take their styling cues from the Vespa's sixties heyday. Given the numbers that they sell, there's a huge demand for stylish retro scooters.

In the last 15 years or so there have been several pretenders to the Vespa's curvy crown. Notably there's been the very decent Aprilia Habana ridden by Jamie Oliver and the Italjet Velocifero. The Velocifero was much loved by the likes of Oasis at the height of Britpop but suffered from spares availability of almost zero and comically priced accessories. Passenger seat pad? That'll be £100. Get a few scooterists down the pub, and sooner or later someone will ask why nobody's producing a GS replica with a modern engine in it. It seems so obvious. Well, now someone has.

This here scoot is apparently the prototype 'Venti', a project by an American company which specialises in Chinese-made off road vehicles. It's clearly heavily influenced by the GS. According to 2strokebuzz it's a plastic body over a tubular frame, rather than the steel monocoque the Vespa is famous for. It certainly looks the part, or will with a few modifications. There's some speculation that the automatic motor is a 150cc unit, either Indian or Chinese. The Venti was on show at the Indianapolis Motorcycle Show this month, so it looks like it might actually be a goer, unlike the 'new' Lambretta rumours that were knocking around a couple of years back. There are at least four companies that claim to own the trademark for Lambretta (quite apart from the clothing company of the same name) two of which have launched scooters. Both of these turned out not to be the beautiful near-replicas promised by teaser images, but bog-standard far eastern auto mopeds rebadged with the famous name, like this insult for the American market, or this slightly nicer one for the Italians. Ugh.