Tag Archives: Vespa

This is a repost of a story on 2strokebuzz, but I just enjoyed this so much I wanted to share it here.

Jeremy Clarkson being the motorcycle curmudgeon that he is, even he’s won over by the end of it. Honestly I struggle to come up with many places that’d be more appropriate or adventurous to see by scooter. I may have to add Vietnam to my own list of 2-wheel destinations. My list for now includes:

All the national parks …

I have but two simple complaints about my new Vespa Grantourismo. One, that the slightest overfilling of the gas tank sucks fuel into the intake track. And second, that you don’t get any auditory clue when your turn indicators are up and blinking.

This is hardly timely, but I wanted to capture my thoughts on riding my Vespa GT-200 for the first time.

It’s a strange thing how for a lot of scooters and motorcycles, the first time you ride it isn’t unitl after you buy it. I get it. Motorbikes require a minimum amount of riding experience and skill to operate at a basic level. You can’t just turn motorcycles and scooters over to people willy nilly. It makes a purchase decision difficult, however. In my case, I was coming from a scooter that I loved when I bought it, but came to hate because of the seating position — something that didn’t crop up until I started taking longer rides. Would the Vespa be better? Would it handle worth a damn? Would the brakes get the thing stopped in a controlled way? The best I could do was talk to people who owned GTs, read the online reviews, and trust the advice of the folks I’ve come know so well at Scooterville.

I bought my first scooter not quite a year ago. It was a 1979 Vespa P200E. I loved that scooter, at least until I started riding it regularly. After a winter of working on it, looking at it, falling in love with the lines and its aircraft heritage and italian sensibility, I finally rode the thing for a couple months. Love and hate. Loved the look, and the handling wasn’t bad. Hated having to shift gears while learning to ride on two wheels, and soon learned that the brakes were mostly for show. I remember one particular ride in late March where I realized that if I were on a twist-and-go scooter, I’d be having worlds more fun.

A week later, I sold the Vespa and bought a Genuine Blur 150 on the recommendation of David Harrington and local ModernBuddy.com buddy, EP_scoot, who both have one in their garage. At first, I loved the Blur. It was so smooth, the brakes were magnificent, and the power was about the same as my P200E. The riding experience was a huge improvement over the P200E and I fell in love with scooting past the point of no return. But over time, what I thought I could live with in terms of imperfect ergonomics got to be, literally, a pain in my ass. As much as I loved the way the Blur sounded, handled, and usually sped away from traffic, after about half an hour my arse usually started hurting.