Vespa manufacture in England is a story in itself. The Douglas company of Bristol built motorcycles for many years in England before discovering motor scooters. Owner Claude McCormack was inspired while on vacation in 1948 by the sight of them buzzing around the streets of Italy, and he envisioned a similar transportation revolution for Great Britain. As in Italy, Britons had to deal with scarce, expensive gasoline and a shortage of automobiles after World War II. Like the Italians, their cars were tiny, so the transition to a small, two-wheeled “car” like the motor scooter did not seem like such a stretch.
McCormack forged an agreement with Piaggio to build Vespa models on British soil, and in early 1951, began producing scooters. The 125-cc Douglas scooter was nearly identical to the Piaggio scooter, right down to the same metallic-green paint scheme. But it had an immediately obvious difference: instead of having the headlight mounted on the fender, the Douglas scooter had the headlight mounted on the legshield below the handlebars. This design was in accordance with British law governing headlight heights, but it created the obvious detriment of the headlight no longer turning with the direction of the front wheel.
Under the sheet metal, there were some minor mechanical differences, as the Douglas company bought most of its outsourced components from British manufactures instead of Italian ones. Lucas electrical systems, Amal carburetors instead of the otherwise ubiquitous Dell’Ortos, British-made seats and tires were among the differences. But essentially, Douglas was building Vespa scooters.
The Douglas scooters caught on, and soon many thousands of them were running around England. Douglas followed Piaggio in upgrading the models through the years. Unlike Piaggio, Douglas changed its model numbers each year, so that a VS2 built in the 1956 model year became a VS3 the following year, and so forth. That was Douglas’s designation for the Vespa 150 GS. After building more than 1125,000 scooters, Douglas quit making them in 1964, but continued importing them from Italy for many years thereafter.
During the 1960s, scooter mania exploded in England, where Vespa motor scooters were embraced by stylish young Mods. Their Carnaby Street image and intelligent playfulness on carefully customized scooters clashed with the blue-collar Rockers on British Triumph, BSA, and Norton motorcycles. Rod Stewart, the Dave Clark Five, and of course, The Who, were Adherents of the Mod’s musical, artistic, and cultural style. The trendy Who movie, Quadrophenia, present a look at the violent encounters between the Mods and the Rockers. Decades later, The Who’s music remains part of Vespa pop culture, with stylish young people still encountering resistance, tough now from Americas on big Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
THE NEW BREED OF SCOOTER
By the 1960s, vespa scooters had been given more horsepower, a rear suspension, better brakes, better electrics, and more streamlined shapes. The 150 GS model of 1955 began the classic era, setting the stylistic current and engine design that would carry Vespa scooters for more than two decades. A smaller, entry-level model, now called the small frame, was powered by a 50-cc engine that took advantage of laws in some European countries that allowed younger drivers to pilot mopeds with engine displacements of 50-cc or less. In France, redundant pedals were added to qualify it as a moped. Later, a 90-cc and a 125-cc version were added to the line of inexpennsive small frame.
Piaggio continued its line of success through the 1970s, developing motor scooters that were faster, sleeker, and more efficient, while staying true to the original design and intent. The 200 Rally became the hot scooter on the street, boasting 12 horsepower, a top speed exceeding 60 miles per hour and, according to the factory, the ability to go to long-distance touring without fear of breakdown. The 200 Rally also was the first Vespa model with oil injection, freeing riders from having to mix lubricating oil with the gasoline. Oil-injected scooters were largely a U.S. phenomenon, the Europeans preferring to premix their own.
The bigger, faster P-series bikes made their appearance in 1978, with shaper styling that looked more modern at the time, but seen from today’s vantage, losing the rounded classic look that made the earlier scooters so appealing. But while Vespa scooters had reached a stage of development where they were more practical, more comfortable, and more reliable, they also were coming up hard against U.S. environmental concerns. The two-cycle engine, long a hallmark of Vespa design, could not be refined enough to suit clean air regulations.
Faced with the environmental pressure and overwhelming competition from Japan, Piaggio pulled out of the U.S. marked in 1986. But still a strong demand drove production of motorscooterd, including Piaggio’s subsequent model, the Cosa, in Europe and Asia. In India, a Vespa plant still turns out scooters, affordable and suitable for crowded urban and rural roads. City street throughout Southeast Asia also are packed with Vespa scooters. In trendy, affluent Japan, classic Vespa models have become a fashionable accessory for stylish young people.
And in Italy, the Vespa motor scooter continues its reign as an urban icon, buzzing through narrow Roman streets, still remembered and revered as the invention that helped bring Italy back from the ruins of war and economic collapse, still emblematic of the Continental lifestyle, and still the same basic design rolled out in 1946.