VESPAS!!!

VESPAS!!!

Thank You For Your Support!!! (The Management...)

SCOOTERS ON A ROLL AGAIN VESPA LEADS THE WAY AS THE CHEAP AND CHEERFUL MACHINES RETURN IN STYLE-- AND TO RECORD SALES

CHARLES P. WALLACE/PONTADERA

It was born in Italy, in the ashes of World War II, but quickly became a symbol of la dolce vita. The Vespa motor scooter, a European icon as recognizable as a London taxi, is 50 this month and still enjoying the wind on its face. Unlike many fashion icons of the 1950s and '60s, the Vespa still revs up the European psyche. Fueled by an economical tankful of gas and the misery of urban commuting, the Vespa and its competitors are riding a scooter boom across the Continent. Sales of scooters rose 22% in France last year and 18% in Germany. In Italy they rocketed from just over 100,000 to nearly half a million, although the brakes are now being applied as the country's economy cools. "You used to buy a scooter because you couldn't afford a car," says Silvio Mancardi, spokesman for A.N.C.M.A., Italy's motorbike manufacturers association. "Today you choose a scooter because there is no more space in the city for a car."

But there's more to it than that. Amid the urban pollution, whiffs of romance and freedom still adhere to the Vespa, much as Audrey Hepburn, perched on the back of one, clung to Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday in 1953. The Vespa's maker, Piaggio Veicoli Europei, is riding a veritable boom that has propelled it from the sales doldrums of the '80s that resulted from intense competition from Japanese companies selling scooters with high-tech plastic bodies. In the past five years, Piaggio has launched 35 new models, from the basic Sfera 50-cc scooter to the trendy Typhoon Benetton, and has captured 43% of European sales, according to company figures for the first half of this year. Last year Piaggio's profits topped $11 million, compared with a $60 million loss in 1993.

"The reasons for the success of Piaggio are mobility and fashion," says the company's senior vice president, Matteo Righero. "There's a big change of attitude. It's becoming fashionable [again] to ride a scooter. It's not a tool but a toy." But the scooter has long been both. "After the war it was an economic question, but it's been a way of life for me ever since," says Christa Solbach, a German "Vespista" for 40 years and president of an international Vespa fan club. Associations of enraptured owners exist around the world, and the more adventuresome Vespa aficionados have ridden their scooters in rallies and on endurance runs from Paris to Saigon and from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego.

The Vespa began life in the Piaggio family's bombed-out warplane factory in Pontadera, near Pisa, in 1946. Corradino D'Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer newly employed to make scooters, came up with a revolutionary design. He put the gearshift on bicycle-like handlebars; hid the engine on the side, under an elegant tail; added a curved front panel to shield the driver's legs from wind and puddles; installed footboards and small wheels; and devised a passenger "bench" on which women in tight skirts could ride without straddling the seat.

Company officials wanted to call the scooter Paperino, the Italian name for Donald Duck, but when Enrico Piaggio saw the sleek design, he was reminded of a vespa, a wasp. So a Vespa it became, buzzing its way from its Tuscan birthplace down to Rome and, via the silver screen, to the world beyond. Families, workers, nearly liberated women, priests and nuns, young Lotharios and film stars alike hopped on and rode off, leaving indelible tread marks along Memory Lane.

"What was intended as a vehicle for married couples became an instrument of conquest for teenage boys," the Italian magazine Oggi noted recently. "The Vespa gave us Italians our first taste of erotic freedom. Young couples headed in droves for the mountains and woods. Millions of kisses have been exchanged on the back of a Vespa."

The original Vespa was cheap to buy and cheap to run--and it had panache. John Wayne, when not on horseback, liked to mount a Vespa, and a becostumed Charlton Heston astonished Romans by riding his Vespa around their city during the filming of Ben Hur in 1959. Gene Kelly, Henry Fonda, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Marcello Mastroianni all steered Vespas through films of the period. So did the character Paparazzo, the prototype of the intrusive celebrity photographer, in La Dolce Vita in 1960. The fashionable Mods of early- and mid-'60s Britain traveled regularly on scooters, often to the English seaside, where they would clash with the rival Rockers, who preferred motorcycles. Their exploits were featured in a handful of films, most notably Quadrophenia in 1979.

While the style setters of the 1950s and '60s helped shape the Vespa legend, parking problems, gridlock and high gasoline prices have contributed to the scooter boom of the '90s. And like other baby boomers at the half-century mark, the Vespa has not been immune to mid-life crisis. The classic Vespa is no longer Europe's best-selling scooter: it fell to seventh place behind models like Piaggio's Typhoon and Zip, with similar engines and more sex appeal.

Piaggio hopes to capture the technological edge for the Vespa, however, by wheeling out a revolutionary 90th model on Sept. 20, the scooter's golden anniversary. It will be the first to use a fuel-injected two-stroke engine, designed to offer superior performance while meeting European Union antipollution standards for the year 2002.

Still, the trend toward faster machines with bigger engines worries Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, 32, Piaggio's chairman, who is credited with turning the company around. Piaggio is asking European governments to ban the now commonplace sale of kits that are used to soup up 50-cc engines, allowing scooters to travel at speeds of up to 100 km/h, rather than at the 45 km/h for which they were designed. "Scooters are beginning to have a not-so-positive image because of the noise and speed problem," he says, and need to be marketed "more as urban utility vehicles than as motorcycles. Now that we are bigger, we need to be a little more politically correct."

And scooter owners need to be a little more circumspect. Such is the popularity of these vehicles that they are being not only driven in droves but stolen in droves as well. Despite a proliferation of dungeon-style chains and other antitheft devices, an estimated 30% of new scooters sold in Italy wind up being stolen in the first year. That's the sting in the tail of the wasp.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS!!!

California Freeway Laws

The short answer is that scooters with engines 150cc and above are always freeway legal in California. Below 150cc are freeway legal, if no sign disallowing "Motor-Driven Cycles" is posted at the freeway entrance and if said "Motor-Driven Cycle" can maintain the posted minimum speed limit, if one is posted.Caveat, most police officers and sheriff's deputies only know the law in general, but never the minute details. If you want to ride your scooter on a California freeway print out the below information and keep it in your glovebox.

The long answer: According to Division 11, Chapter 5, Section 21960 of the State of California 1995 vehicle code:

Freeways 21960. (a) The Department of Transportation and local authorities *may*, by order, ordinance or resolution, with aspect to freeways or designated portions thereof under their respective jurisdictions, to which all rights of freeway access have been acquired, prohibit or restrict the use of the freeway or any portion thereof by pedestrians, bicycles, or other nonmotorized traffic or by any person operating a motor-driven cycle or a motorized bicycle. Any such prohibition or restriction pertaining to either bicycles or motor-driven cycles, or to both shall be deemed to include motorized bicycles; and no person may operate a motorized bicycle wherever such prohibition or restriction is in force...[contrary rules allowing walking to/from disabled vehicles]

(b) Such prohibitory regulation shall be effective when appropriate signs giving notice thereof are *erected upon any* freeway and the approaches thereto.

(c) No ordinance or resolution of local authorities shall aplly to any state highway until the proposed ordinance or resoltuion has been presented to, and approved in writing by, the [California] Department of Transportation. [Last amended in 1976]

What is a "motor-driven cycle?" And what does it have to do with scooters? California (as with most states) has no formal definition of motorscooters. For legal purposes most scooters are motorcycles in all 50 states. But California, as with most states breaks down the motorcycle definition into motorcycle, motor-driven cycle, and moped (or motorized bicycle). According to Division 1, Section 405 of the State of California 1995 vehicle code:

Motor-Driven Cycle 405. A "motor-driven cycle" is any motorcycle with a motor which displaces less than 150 cubic centimeters, and every bicycle with a motor-attached. A motor-driven cycle does not include a motorized bicycle, as defined in Section 406. [Last amended in 1991]

Motorized Bicycle 406. A "motorized bicycle" or "moped" is any two-wheeled vehicle or three-wheeled device having fully operative pedals for propulsion by human power, or having no pedals if powered solely by electrical energy, and an automatic transmission and a motor which produces less than 2 gross brake horsepower and is capable of propelling the device at a maximum speed of no more than 30 miles per hour on level ground.