THE MOTORSPORT SCOOTERS PHILOSOPHY

With the scooters of today this maxim is as true as ever. More and more poor quality parts (and scooters) are populating the roads, masquerading as long-term solutions and sharing space with the wonderful vehicles we have come to know and love.

For our part, Motorsport Scooters is committed to carrying only the highest quality scooters, parts and accessories. From a huge selection of original Piaggio parts for your vintage Vespas to the latest and greatest add-ons for your soon-to-be classic, we have everything you need to get out on the road and stay on the road for life.

We've got high-quality parts to restore your high-quality vintage Vespa.

We've also got some top-of-the-line accessories for new scooters ranging from new Vespas to the Genuine Buddy to new scooters made by Honda and Yamaha. 

We've even got a selection in our shop of the elite bikes in the new scooter world, the consistently highest-rated new scooters on the market. These bikes have been making a reputation for themselves through their reliability, style, and fun factor. Our customers love them and we do too.

History

All this stuff isn't necessarily expensive to buy, but it is worth it. We're continuing to search the market for the best replacement parts, accessories, and scooters because you and your scooters deserve only the best. Order for yourself and see. Those who drive with inferior parts or inferior scooters will eventually come to realize "You get what you pay for."

Before there ever was a Motorsport Scooters, there was a guy named Alex who spent all of his spare time from 1986 on fixing and rebuilding scooters in his mom's garage. At the time, he started ordering and selling parts that were commonly requested, cables, cable housings, light-bulbs, etc., and then he bought out the old Riva/Vespa at the beach's inventory and a few other small inventories after which he had a massive pile of parts overfilling his mom's garage. Parts were everywhere: front yard, rear yard, side yard, bedrooms (you get the idea, he had a S$%Tload of parts). San Diego scooterists soon found out about him and then he had a business on his hands, so a real shop location needed to be found.

Shortly thereafter, the first shop, Vespa Motorsport, opened up at 3450 Adams avenue in 1992 and quickly attracted a following here in San Diego. Back then all of the scooterists in San Diego knew each other and most of them could be divided up into two categories: Mods or Racers, a division that is still somewhat true today. Mods tended to be the scooterists who wanted to either chrome-out their rides and racers wanted to cut them down and race them out. Alex was the rare breed of scooterist who was into both, so even in the early days he sponsored race bikes for the A.S.R.A. (American Scooter Racing Association) and he also owned a decked-out P200E too (which he still owns today with over 100,000 miles on it). Seeing a need, his shop started catering to all scooterists and joined in on many scooter rallies around the west coast up to Seattle and out as far east as Colorado.

Eventually the shop moved in with the world famous Fabio at Vespa Supershop Inc., 2525 University Ave, and then an 8 year stint at 4225 30th Street (El Cajon Blvd and 30th Street) in the beautiful neighborhood of North Park - the same neighborhood the shop had been in for the previous 16 years- but all good things must come to an end.  All those years of buying scooter parts, plus taking on the Vespa and Piaggio lines, caused us to outgrow our shop.  We found a new Fortress of Scootertude, an 11,000 square foot behemoth on the frontage road off of Pacific Highway.  Our new (and hopefully forever) address is 3955 Pacific Highway, San Diego, CA 92110.

HONDA ZUMA SCOOTER SPORT

HONDA ZUMA SCOOTER SPORT Specifications:

Machine
Engine type: 49cc liquid-cooled single-cylinder four-stroke
Induction: 18mm CV Carburetor with automatic choke
Starter: CD

Drive Train
Transmission: Automatic V-Matic belt drive

Chassis / Suspension / Braking
Front suspension: Twin-downtube fork; 2.2 inches travel
Rear suspension: Single-shock; 2.6 inches travel
Front and Rear brake: drum
Front Tire: 120/90-10
Rear Tire: 130/90-10

Dimension
Wheelbase: 49.8 inches
Height: 28.9 inches
Empty weight: 194 pounds
Capacity fuel: 1.3 gallons

Other
Emissions meet CARB and EPA standards.
Choice of colors: Red, Matte Gray Metallic
Model ID: NPS50
Factory warranty: 1 year.

A Vespa is not just a scooter. It is one of the great icons of Italian style and elegance, and with more than 16 million units produced, is well known throughout the world. For more than 50 years, Vespa has fascinated millions of people and given the world an irreplaceable icon of Italian style and a means of personal transport that has become synonymous with freedom. It now falls under the umbrella of the Piaggio Group.

THE VESPA PX RETURNS IN 2011

The legendary Vespa PX is back with us. Just 2 years since production ceased, and 33 years since the first Vespa PX was produced, the iconic scooter returns!In keeping with what PX lovers adore about the Vespa PX, little changes from the original. Maybe surprisingly, the 2 stroke engine stays (in 125 or 150 form) with help from a new cat and electronic ignition plus the old kickstart also remains as back up, a much loved feature. Comfort and safety seems to be the focal point with the revised PX gaining a new seat with new fabrics, and an upgraded headlamp for improved visability. The rear light has seen some refinements to make it classic yet elegant. Enhancements throughout the lighting system have taken place along with the front grille and handlebar grips. Front disc and rear drums are retained together with the handlebar mounted 4 speed manual gear change.Strange how the Vespa PX ceased production in 2008 because of its excessive 2 stroke emissions yet the new model retains the 2 stroke power. It seems a likley arguement that continuing to produce the PX in 2008 would have affected sales of the modern 4 stroke Vespa such as the GTS/GTV range. These have indeed been accepted across the scooter scene but this didn’t happen overnight and has taken a good 3 or 4 years.

Vespa Scooter Longings

One of the most enduring scenes in cinema is in the classic film Roman Holiday. The film starred the immortal and ever beautiful Audrey Hepburn (Oh how I love her!) and the talented Gregory Peck. Hepburn played a princess who was visiting Rome for a state visit. Tired of her strictly regimented life, she escaped the confines of her embassy, disguised herself as a commoner and began touring the streets of Rome. There she met Gregory Peck who played an American correspondent in Italy. The movie was basically a sight-seeing tour of the streets and Rome, but it is very memorable because they both toured the scenic spots in a Vespa scooter.

This singular scene catapulted the Vespa as a cultural icon. Though the movie was not really what you call a happy ending for they both did not end up with each other (oops sorry for ruining the plot to those who have not seen it), generations of girls dream of becoming Audrey Hepburn being swept away by their own Gregory Peck driving into the sunset in their very own Vespa.

Vespa scooters have their cult following. Like the Volkswagen or the Mini Cooper, Vespas are liked because of their unique (some consider cute as the more appropriate description) design. Vespa’s design was derived from wasps hence the name. As a matter of fact, wasp if translated into Italian is called vespa. The Vespa was first made after world war two and since then its design saw little deviations. Scooters are perfect for the old narrow and cobbled Roman streets. It reflects the olden times when people are gentler, the days seemed slower and the air was full of romanticism. From those famed cobbled streets Vespa spread throughout the world. Perhaps because this little mode of transportation is perfect for weaving in and out in today’s heavily congested roads or perhaps Italians are really talented designers of vehicles. (I am sure most of you will agree with me on this point. I have yet to meet somebody who finds the highly desirable and exotic Ferrari sports cars as ugly.)

Ever since I had seen a Vespa in Roman Holiday, I always wanted to buy one for myself.

THE BRITISH SCOOTERS

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.

Italian style, Sicilian girls, Brighton mods and an icon called Vespa

Italian style, Sicilian girls, Brighton mods and an icon called Vespa

 

The Vespa still remains a symbol of la dolce vita 61 years after it first spluttered out of Enrico Piaggio’s factory. Andy Round hits the high road with an Italian style icon.

So, I’m sat at a Sicilian café in the chic and cheerful medieval town of Taormina when two Vespas pull up. The female riders both wearing white suits, switched off their ignitions, dismounted with synchronised harmony, pulled off their helmets with a shampoo advert swoop of freshly cut dark hair and scissor-walked off down the cobbled street in a blur of blood-red lipstick and Versace gold.

In the golden sunlight, it looked like the opening of a film. Those women must have spent hours rehearsing that entrance. Actually they probably had, it was Sicily after all. In the café every man was looking at wonder after them, expressos suspended in disbelief.

Would the scene have been better with Harley Davidsons? Nope. Would a Maserati Spyder have been an improvement? You’re joking. The whole key to the vision was the girls’ mode of transport. The Vespas, at least to western European eyes, just looked so achingly cool. You couldn’t have worn a well-cut white suit on anything else. And, this April on the 60^th anniversary of the first Vespa to roll out of Piaggio’s factory, the cool currency of this little design classic is higher than ever.

Visionary old Enrico Piaggio. He struggled to get his father Rinalado’s business back on track after the Allied troops had bombed the living daylights out of their sea and aircraft factory. Piaggio Senior had started the family firm in 1884 at the height of the glamorous Belle Époque and made a fortune from outfitting luxury cars, planes and ocean-liners. Sadly, Second World War wiped out any dreams of future luxuries.

Post war, son Enrico refocused the company’s attentions on getting Italy moving again. He moved the operation to Pontadera in Tuscany and set about creating a new type of motorbike similar to the collapsible scooters used by US paratroopers. Dissatisfied with the first designs he saw, Piaggio called in Corradino D’Ascanio an aeronautical engineer. D’Ascanio had established an admirable reputation as the designer of one of the first modern helicopters. Fortunately he hated everything about motorbikes.

Using aircraft technology, D’Ascanio pinched the planned shape, added a front fork similar to landing gear, created a single steel chassis and added a shield that would protect finely tailored Italian clothes from the most obstinate of road debris. When the little prototype icon was wheeled out before Piaggio in 1946, the factory owner famously exclaimed, “Sembra una vespa!” (It looks like a wasp). It was not since the Roman chariot that Italians had made a set of hot wheels that were proudly their own.

By 1950, the 43 mph, 65-inch, 100 mpg, 185lb, four-and-a-half horsepower scooter had become Italy’s biggest manufacturing seller. The 517,000 Vespas spluttering along Italy’s roads outnumbered Italian cars. “The best way to fight Communism in this country is to give each worker his own form of transport,” Piaggio said, “have something valuable of their own and have a stake in the principal of private property.”

Many Italian industrialists took him at his word and bought Vespas on a sort of pre-contemporary company fleet plan, selling them to employees via salary deductions. Naturally, even at Piaggio’s own plant, more than 60 per cent of the 3,500 workers owned one of the scooters.

Internationally the quirky little beast had universal appeal and spread to 45 other countries through licence agreements or as a result of over-stretched export orders. When Vespa tentatively appeared in the US in 1952 the original order for 1,000 by Sears, Roebuck & Co was immediately stepped up to 5,000 (with a further 2,000 every following month) as demand scootered past supply.

In an inspirational piece of 1953 product placement, the curvaceous shape of the Vespa proved to be the transportation of choice for a young Audrey Hepburn and rather older Gregory Peck as they zigzagged through the streets in Roman Holiday towards the inevitable carabiniere welcoming committee. Audrey, with her cropped hair, looked great, but the star was definitely D’Ascanio’s little creation.

Understandably, the Vespa inspired the world’s philosophers. Author of The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco, took time out to pen the equally worthy tome The Cult Of The Vespa. For him, “The Vespa came to be linked in my eyes with transgression, sin and temptation.” He’d probably witnessed the same women I’d seen in Sicily.

In reality, however, the Vespa was simply a great way to carry the whole family as they raced through heavy traffic balancing the shopping. But for non-Italians it was greater than the sum of its pressed steel parts. The Vespa represented dreams, freedom and fun all wrapped up in an exotic culture of la dolce vita and warm summer’s evenings.

It’s no wonder the razor-sharp suited style warriors of the 1960s British Mod movement took a liking to the self-consciously designed Vespa. What was the point of wearing your best Savile Row if nobody could see you as you flew down to Brighton beach for a weekend fight? Admittedly, the cold climate of South England was not as romantic as the Italian coast, (just see the scooter film Quadrophenia) but at least you could look good as you escaped those pesky rockers on their dirty looking Enfields.

Still, the Mods were not the only ones to park their stylishly well-tailored bottoms on Vespa’s trusty seat. Celebrity Vespa fans include Audrey Tatou, Joan Collins, Jamie Oliver, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Milla Jovovich, Jayne Mansfield, Britt Ekland, Jude Law, Sophia Loren, Antonio Banderas, Ursula Andress and even Mr Macho himself John Wayne.

There has also been a fair share of eccentrics. In 1952, Georges Monneret adapted an amphibious version which he used to cross the English Channel while Giorgio Bettinelli used his unmodified version to travel from Rome to Saigon and then from Chile to Tasmania. It took Bettinelli a total of four years to enjoy the two trips which started in 1992 and saw him being attacked in the Congo and sprayed with capsicum in Moscow.

Today, dreams of the open road atop a Vespa are keeping more than 6,000 Piaggio Group employees in gainful two-wheel employment in 50 countries. At the end of 2005 more than 16 million scooters had been produced since 1946.

This 60^th anniversary year marks the celebration of a new Vespa on to the world’s busy streets. The GTS 250 Granturismo may be as smart looking as the original little ‘wasp’ but its now necessarily more environmentally friendly and under its redesigned tail light, sporty lines and vintage-style rear rack is a monster (in Vespa terms at least) 250cc engine.

It’s a long way from its four-and-a-half horse powered predecessor, but you can be sure that when either model is ridden with true Italian style the appeal will always be timeless. Just ask those two girls in Sicily.