Do you love to stand out in the crowd and turn heads wherever you go? Look no further than the new Vespa Primavera Color Vibe, which combines the classic Vespa spirit with a vibrant and trendy look. This bike is perfect for anyone who wants to add a touch of irreverence to their daily ride. In this blog post, we’ll review the unique features of the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe and help you decide if it’s the perfect fit for you.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is a two-color livery that creates a playful and unique game of contrasts. The body is bold Orange Color Vibe or White Color Vibe and is paired with a footwell in Ottanio, a particular shade of turquoise. This color is also featured on the typical “tie” on the shield and the exclusive wheel rims, made for this version in a special shiny metallic finish.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is a celebration of the playful Vespa universe, combining originality and a desire to redefine trends. The bike perfectly captures the youthful Vespa spirit that is all about experimenting and being original. Jump in the seat and go beyond your every expectation with the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe sports the characteristic 50cc engine that allows for an enjoyable and safe ride in any condition. The bike also features a single-cylinder, 4-stroke, 3-valve engine that delivers the perfect balance of power and fuel economy. The bike also features an ABS braking system that ensures maximum safety during your ride.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is perfect for anyone looking for a bike that is both timeless in its design and youthful in its spirit. The bike’s unique color scheme perfectly captures the Vespa’s adventurous spirit. The bike is perfect for anyone who loves to ride with a touch of irreverence and originality.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is a perfect celebration of the fun and playful Vespa spirit. The bike beautifully captures the youthful vibe that Vespa has become known for. If you’re looking for a bike that is both timeless in design and vibrant in color, the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is the bike for you. With the bike’s unique color scheme and its perfect balance of power and fuel economy, you’ll have a ride that’s perfect for any occasion. Don’t wait – jump in the seat and experience the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe today!
Are you in the market for a reliable, affordable scooter for cruising around town? Look no further than the Piaggio Liberty 50 and Piaggio Typhoon 50! Both entry level scooters offer great features, dealer support, and a budget-friendly price tag. In this in-depth comparison, we’ll take a closer look at the pros and cons of each scooter to help you decide which one is right for you.
Let’s start by examining the similarities between the Piaggio Liberty 50 and Piaggio Typhoon 50. Both models have a 50cc single-cylinder engine that delivers around 4 horsepower. They both have storage compartments under the seat for your personal belongings, and come with a year of roadside assistance for added peace of mind.
When it comes to differences, the Piaggio Liberty 50 has more of a classic, vintage look with its round headlights and chrome accents. It also has a larger fuel tank, allowing for longer rides without needing to refuel and fuel injected. On the other hand, the Piaggio Typhoon 50 has a sportier look with its angular front design and aggressive stance. It also has a larger front wheel which provides better handling and stability but is carburatted with auto choke.
In terms of user experience, both scooters are easy to operate and maneuver. They have a twist-and-go throttle system and a simple dashboard with speedometer, odometer, and fuel gauge. The Piaggio Liberty 50 has a slightly more comfortable ride with its contoured seat and adjustable rear suspension. The Piaggio Typhoon 50, on the other hand, has a shorter wheelbase which makes it more agile and easier to handle in traffic.
When it comes to pricing, both scooters are affordable options, but the Piaggio Typhoon 50 comes in at a lower price point. However, the Piaggio Liberty 50 offers more value for your money with its larger fuel tank and more comfortable ride.
If you’re looking for an entry level scooter that combines style, reliability, and affordability, the Piaggio Liberty 50 and Piaggio Typhoon 50 are both great options. In the end, it comes down to personal preference and what features matter most to you. Are you looking for a classic, vintage look and a more comfortable ride? Go for the Piaggio Liberty 50. Or are you more interested in a sporty design and better agility on the road? Then the Piaggio Typhoon 50 is the scooter for you. Either way, you can’t go wrong with these reliable, fun-filled options from Piaggio.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Piaggio and Vespa scooters and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, we aim to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 vs 2023 Piaggio BV 400 (Beverly)
Touring motorcycles are among the most sought-after rides for long distance travel. However, many people shy away from these bikes as they tend to be heavy, bulky, and not very practical in town. Fortunately, there are other options on the market that are more nimble and versatile, and in this blog post, we’ll take a close look at two of them – the 2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 and the 2023 Piaggio BV 400 Beverly.
The Kawasaki Versys-X 300 is a fantastic lightweight touring motorcycle that is perfect for city riding and long-distance trips. The bike is powered by a 296cc parallel twin engine, which delivers a smooth ride while also providing decent power. The Versys-X 300 is also equipped with a 6-speed transmission that’s easy to shift, making it an ideal choice for both beginners and experienced riders.
One of the things that make the Versys-X 300 stand out is its impressive fuel economy. With a fuel tank that can hold up to 4.5 gallons, this bike can easily travel more than 200 miles before needing refueling. Its ergonomic design makes it comfortable for riders to sit on for extended periods, and the bike comes with a useful windscreen that helps to protect you from wind, rain, and other weather elements.
The Piaggio BV 400 Beverly is a unique bike that is often overlooked by people looking for touring motorcycles. At first glance, it may not look like a touring bike, but this bike has everything you need for a long-distance trip. The Piaggio BV 400 comes equipped with a fuel-injected 399cc engine, equivalent to what you’d find in a mid-sized bike, and a CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) that smoothly transfers power to the rear wheel.
Another standout feature of the BV 400 is its robust build quality. The bike is incredibly easy to maintain and is built to last. The BV 400 comes standard with a lockable glove box and a spacious under-seat storage compartment, which provides ample space to store your gear, tools, and other essentials.
The riding position of the BV 400 is upright and comfortable, making it easy for riders to stay comfortable throughout long-distance rides. The bike also features a large windshield and comfortable seat, both of which provide excellent wind and weather protection.
When it comes to choosing lightweight touring motorcycles, the 2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 and 2023 Piaggio BV 400 are both excellent choices. They both offer excellent performance, long-distance capability, and great features. However, each of them has its unique strengths.
The Kawasaki Versys-X 300 is an ideal choice for riders who want a versatile and nimble bike that performs excellently in the city and long-distance rides. On the other hand, the Piaggio BV 400 is a unique bike that combines the best of a scooter and a motorcycle while also offering plenty of storage space and practical features.
Whichever bike you choose, both the Kawasaki Versys-X 300 and Piaggio BV 400 Beverly are excellent options for anyone looking for a good touring motorcycle that can deliver comfort, performance, and practicality in equal measures.
To conclude, these are by far some of the best options out there for low-displacement touring. The lighter weight, simpler design, and ease of use makes it appealing to anyone looking for an enjoyable ride. Ultimately, we can create a community where touring bikes come together—and this is a great place to start. If you’re interested in checking them out in person and learning more about the Versys 300 X or Versys 650LTand other options available, visit Jim Gilberts PowerSports, Kawasaki Canada’s # 1 Dealer.
They offer expert advice on choosing your next touring bike and even provide competitive financing options should you ever decide to take the plunge. Don’t worry if you’re unsure of what you want; they’ll help you find that perfect match! So don’t wait any longer—make sure to head over to Jim Gilbert’s soon!
Hey every body, it’s Peter, and in this video we are gonna do an in-depth review of the Piaggio Typhoon 50 CC Scooter. And we’re filming here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports where if you wanna know more about this vehicle, I will be able to bring it back on video again and again and again. So if you are interested in this vehicle or a Vespa scooter or another Piaggio scooter, the Liberty, make sure you subscribe and let me know in the comments the types of things you want to know about these scooters because I’m able to come back and answer your questions in both the comments section and on future videos. Now here’s the thing that’s a little bit tricky right now with the typhoon. The typhoon actually has a few things that are not what I think is correct on the website. Uh, there’s a spec sheet on there that’s a little bit outta date.
It has the wrong size tires, and underneath here it says that there’s a USB port, but I can’t find one. So I think there’s a couple updates that need to happen to that website. And what I’m gonna do is show you what we’ve got here, tell you the things I like and don’t like about it, tell you the things that I think are similar. But to be fair, like I said, some of the specs I’m not a hundred percent sure on. And then what we’ll do is we’ll come back to this vehicle again, again with your questions to make sure that I answer both my questions and your questions before I make my next video. So again, there will be more information on this scooter. It is a popular scooter and it’s one that I would probably recommend. It’s the entry level in the Piaggio lineup.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
I quite like a lot of features about it, but like I said, there are things I need to know and instead of me just going and asking those questions right now, we’re gonna get your questions as well and make sure we answer every question we can to build sort of a database of information. So let’s get going with a review of this vehicle right now. So let’s start by giving just a general overview of what we’ve got here. To start, let’s just hop on here. First of all, I’m about six feet tall. Of course, on a scooter you can be much shorter than me and be comfortable. Right now it’s on the center stand, which of course lifts the rear wheel off the ground. Gives it a higher seat height, but it does make it easier for me to sit on it with both feet up in the video here.
Couple nice things you’ve got here. Unlike the Vespa scooter, which is one of my favorite scooters, the Vespa is a little bit more expensive. And like I said, this is a lower, uh, price point than the Vespa, but unlike the Vespa, you have a fully flat four floor. So that’s just like the liberty here gives you a little bit more space to walk around. Now the Liberty and the Vespa will have a storage compartment in here. This one does not appear to have one. It has a little panel here, but I think I played with that a few times. I’m pretty sure that’s just fuses and other things. Uh, probably mechanicals, that kind of thing. So there’s no storage compartment here and that allows you to put a headlight in here or it allows them to put a headlight in there instead of up here.
So we’ll talk about the overall styling, but you can see here at six feet tall, very, very comfortable. This seat does appear to me to be just a little bit squishier than the other two seats. They seem to be a little bit firmer. As far as passenger accommodations, this is always a little trickier and jump back, you’ve got your foot pegs there. They say they are extractable, I believe on the website. Um, I don’t know what extractable means. I think it means fold out. These are not fold out, uh, um, pegs right now. So they’re just mounted there on the Vespa. The body
Work kind of gets in a little bit of the way, so your heels are just touching the body. Work on the Piaggio, it has the fold out foot pegs. Um, on the, uh, liberty, excuse me, on this one here, it’s kind of an in between. They’re not fooled out. The body work isn’t there, but there is some body work that touches your legs here. Either way, your passenger’s gonna be perfectly fine for what you’re doing. It’s a 50 fe, 50 cc scooters. So in North America you’re usually not taking a passenger very far. Other parts of the world, obviously they can load all kinds of people on here, um, and they go everywhere. But in North American roads with North American speeds and laws, probably you’re taking the second passenger just very briefly around town, which I think this works fine for. And then of course, as a driver, you’ve got a lot of comfort here.
I will say that the mirrors are very good. They clear my shoulders here, just a tiny bit of my elbow in there, but that’s probably more adjustment of the mirror. Yeah, actually they clear very well. So nice. Uh, good mirror position. We’re gonna talk about the dash here, but let’s start with the front wheel, because the front wheel is where you get something different on this scooter. And even though this is the entry level price, it may be something that you’re looking for that you don’t get in higher price scooters. So let’s start with that and we’ll work our way back. So taking a look at the front wheel here of the typhoon, you’ve got a lot of things going on here. So let’s just start with the brakes. You’ve got kind of a cool gold coloring here. Two piss and caliper on a disc brake Some of the discs on the other models will have drilled rotors. In other words, there’s circular drilled holes through them for ventilation. This one has the same idea with sort of an oval shaped, um, ventilation. The reality is for a 50 cc scooter, you don’t need a ton of ventilation like you would on, um, you know, a high performance sport bike or something like that. So this serves a purpose. And then a lot of this is just about style and frankly, from a style perspective, they do a good job. Unlike the Vespa, this is more like the regular PIH where you have the two fork tubes, one on each side. Vespa has everything all on this side, but this is your typical suspension mount. So again, pretty simple, pretty standard stuff, nothing kind of crazy in here. What I do like though is you have these one 20 by 70 by 14 wheels. So let’s translate that for you. One 20 is the width of the, uh, tire that are width of that tread. 70 is a, uh, percentage of the sidewall that will leave that for later. But 14 is the big number here. So a Vespa has a 12 inch rim, and the piaggio on the front tire is a 16 inch rim. This one is 14, so bigger than the Vespa. And the difference between the Vespa and the Piag Gio, uh, the Piaggio Liberty, excuse me, is that the Vespa has a little bit wider tires. The Piag Liberty has a little bit narrower tires. This one is both larger diameter than the Vespa and wider than the Vespa. So although it’s a little bit down in diameter from the 16 inch front wheel, you have a 14 inch wheel here. And the Vespa, or sorry the Piag Liberty has a 14 inch rear wheel.
So does this. And it’s also a fairly wide wheel, so you end up with this motorcycle width type tire. Uh, a lot of sport bikes are a one 20 millimeter width, so very standard motorcycle tire type thing. I mean smaller in diameter, but standard width, which allows you, in my mind, a little bit more rubber on the road, uh, gives you kind of that nice curvature to it there for the angle. And you’ve got a little bit deeper tread to me, to my eyes compared to some of the other ones. So you’ve got a nice little tire here, uh, sort of appropriately sized. If you, um, think the Vespa wheels are too small, this is larger and that just gives you a little bit of an option there. Let’s work our way to the back now. So here’s the area where I’m a little bit unsure about componentry and how they mix with the liberty.
Like I said, the specs that I have are not fully up to date. So what’s interesting is this panel here, you could have it as a shared piece on the Piag Gio and on the Vespa it actually says Piag Gio down here on both of those models. This one has the same panel here without the nameplate here. Uh, both the other models have a little, um, black plastic plug there. This is a little bit greasy there, there we go. They have a black plastic plug there. Um, but this one has the actual Kickstarter. So what you do is you pull this out and you can kickstart it. Of course it doesn’t need to be kickstarted, it has an electric start. You can hit that button. It also has on the other models a four T down here with a little, uh, air cooling area down there.
This, it looks a little different on both of them, but there are absolutely some shared components here, at least to my eyes, between the Vespa and the Liberty. And the reason I point that out is because these are, this is the less expensive version, so you’re not full fr clean slate here you are absolutely sharing some components between the higher priced models and you’re getting them here at a lower price. You’ve got a single shock here down there, and it is a, um, adjustable for Preloads. You can spin this around and if you have a lot of weight on there, you can kind of restore that, uh, uh, ride height and that kind of thing. So good stuff through here. And again, for an entry level scooter, you’re not looking for crazy high-end stuff. You’re looking for basic transportation and this does that very, very well.
I do wanna show you the front wheel here from the opposite side of the brake. Again, the rear wheel has the, uh, transmission on the one side, the ga, the uh, exhaust on the other side or the muffler least on the other side. This one’s a little more open and you can really see that automotive style wheel. Now hopefully I can move this camera around here and kind of get the angles here. It’s pretty cool. Yeah, you can sort of see that there. It’s a little bit harder to show when you look at it from this angle here. Excuse me, I’m trying to work with my tripod. Uh, you can see that there’s just kind of some angles in here. So a really high end looking wheel. It’s got some style to it, it does not film well, but it does look pretty cool in person.
A lot of people were say, sort of saying this to them looks like the sportier version of some of these scooters compared to others. And yeah, you could certainly make that case with the style here. So taking a look at the seat here, you can see you’ve got some texture in here, some detail in there, no real stitching, at least not stitching for style like you would have on Theves button, frankly, some of the uh, pi gio liberties as well. Uh, but again, very good seat and like I said, a little bit of a cush to it. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna throw the key in here. I’m just gonna work my way around the tripod here. So if I look like I’m a little uncomfortable, that’s why we’re gonna zip that open. We’ve got owner’s manual in here. Now again, the current website lists that there is a USB port in here.
Uh, I don’t see that. I’ve spent a lot of time with scooters and I feel like I should be to find this on my own and I haven’t been able to find it. So I just wanna be clear that, um, the, uh, side that you can’t see on this side here looks identical to that side here. They claim you could fit a full face helmet in here and that wouldn’t surprise me. You can see that it does have that shape where you could put the helmet down. It is nicely carved out in the top here. So, um, while every full face helmet may not fit in here, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if, um, you could fit a, uh, full face helmet. It does look like it’s a very good size over here. One thing you can see, maybe just actually you can’t see.
Let’s scroll a little spin a little this way just off camera here. There is your gasoline fill there. So of course that is locked underneath your seat. Now one thing I do like on the liberty and on the Vespa scooter is there’s little tabs down here where if you wanted to leave your gear in here, you could put the D-ring on a tab here and fold the seat. That’s something that’s not available here. So if you wanna lock up your helmet, uh, the only place to lock it would be inside here, not hanging off the side of this one. Uh, of course there are ways to, you know, handle some of that stuff. But just so you know, there are a couple little minor, minor little details that are different here that, um, you know, might justify just a slightly lower price. When it comes to taking cargo on a scooter, of course you have lots of options, scooters, especially in the piag o inve lineup.
They do have a clip like this. Now this is the better clip in my opinion, on the, uh, liberty. They have this the best, but they have a different style. This one you can see, you can slide a bag in there and it clips together. So whatever bag you have, whether it’s a backpack, a grocery bag, whatever it else it is, uh, you can clip the handle through there. You can put it between your feet. And of course, because it’s a flat floor there, it’s gonna sit securely between your feet as you’re riding. And of course the top end nicely locked in here when you’re not using that just clips in there. So again, typical scooter stuff. One thing you don’t have here is the, um, both the Vespa and the Liberty do have an opening compartment here. This one doesn’t. But again, this is basic transportation.
You can take a backpack, you can take things with you and make it work. And I quite like the way this, uh, scooter lays out. So let’s just take a look at one thing that is gonna show you this is a little bit less expensive than the liberty or the Vespa. So here it is. This is the gauge cluster that you’re gonna be looking at. And this is really the symbol that you bought. The less expensive model, the more modern liberty and Vespa do have nicer gauges will show you a picture of them, at least one of ’em. Right now they’re very similar on both the Vespa and the Liberty. However, here you have the old traditional dial style odometer, which again, is not something you see on many vehicles anymore. Uh, the needles, again, a little bit dated. So you’ve got a nice fuel gauge here.
Uh, clear and easy to read. Absolutely, you’ve got lights in there for your high beam, for your, uh, low beam and your signal lights in there. But this is a thing you’re going to look at all the time. Now, to me, if you’re looking for an inexpensive scooter, you’re buying a lot of quality in this piaz GIO branded Typhoon, um, rather than some, you know, cheaper, cheaper brand. But like I said, you are always looking at these gauges. I’d like to see them update this, but again, I understand why they don’t. They’re hitting a price point. This, and again, you’re, you’re sharing components here with a higher trim vehicle. This is just the one thing that is not to me up to current, uh, modern day scooter standards. But again, fully functional. You’ve got your speedometer, that’s really all you need. You’ve got a fuel gauge, which is great odometer, so there’s no triple odometer, that kind of thing on this, where you would get that on the higher trim lens with more of a digital, uh, odometer display and again, analog gauges.
So take a look at that. Let’s look at some more shared components with this and the, uh, at least the pi. So where we compare this to the liberty, you’ve actually got identical buttons for your high, for your headlights here. Again, you can flash to pass by pressing that down. And then of course, lock it in high beams like I just did up there and regular low beams like that. And then of course your signal lights as well. You’ve got your signal light left, cancel signal light, right cancel like that. Simple, simple stuff. The only bit difference in um, this and the liberty is the horn button. Horn button here is a little different style and you’ll see the same thing over on the other side when we talk about our kill switch and our start button right side throttle side, your grips are the same as the liberty.
Your brakes feel very similar or the same to me. And then you’ve got an identical kill switch here. Again, the styling here of the start button, and again, this is an electric start even though it has a kickstart, uh, uh, handle down there. This is electric start. This button is the only real difference, uh, for controls this button in the hoard button from the more, uh, you know, sort of up up the line liberty. So let’s take an overall view of this bike again. So if you’re looking at a scooter like this, let’s just talk about overall some of the differences. We talked about the seat here. You have a little bit higher end seat here and a little bit higher end seat here on the Vespa and the piaggi Liberty. Now this one is a special edition model of the, oh I’m gonna say it wrong, b a c Ibai, uh, chocolate, I think.
Uh, oh, well I’m saying that wrong I’m sure, but it’s the special edition one here. But you can see there are some style options within the Liberty lineup and certainly Vespa is known for its style as well. The Vespa does have an L e D headlight. Both of these are gonna be just halogen lights. So again, you’re paying more, you’re getting a few different things. The Vespa style, the frame here is actually part of the body. So what you see here, the body is part of the frame, I should say, where the Typhoon and the Liberty are built a little bit more like a modern sport bike. They have a frame and they have plastic fairings on the outside to give it that shape and give it that style. You’ve got that classic chrome everywhere kind of styling on Vespa. You’ve got a lot of gloss black over here.
Here you have some gloss black, but you have some differences here while you’ve got a rear rack here of sorts. And uh, little handle grab there, you still have the handle grab here, but no rear rack. So you’ve got some modern styling here. I really like the look of these fat, fairly large wheels. But you can see here that’s a 16 inch wheel that’s narrower, that’s a 12 inch wheel that’s you know, in between for width. And this is the largest front tire. This Liberty has a 14 inch rear wheel tire, which is similar in diameter to or same in diameter as this one, but I think they are slightly different. Yes, this is only a 100. So again, wider tire again on the um, typhoon here as well. And then the Vespa has 12 inches front and rear and I believe they’re actually identical size. Didn’t check that exactly. So a 50 cc scooter performance is going to be similar. There’s not massive differences in power, but there may be some differences. We’re gonna have to look into that. Like I said, the spec sheet I have on this one isn’t perfect. Couple things I like from the seating position here. Seating position on all three of them. Very comfortable. Both of those ones have round mirrors. This one has a little bit more similar style to something like the Kawasaki Ninja style. Little bit more elongated mirrors here. Uh, yeah, objects and mirror closer than they appear on both sides here. So again, slightly wide angle mirrors here. Slightly wide angle mirrors on both of those.
But again, those ones are round, this one’s regular. So there are differences in style and there are differences in some pricing things. There are reasons to move up to these two, but again, if you’re just looking for a basic scooter, the typhoon has a lot to offer. These do not last a place like New Brunswick here. You can drive this at 14 years old after taking a written test. If you have a car license, you can also drive this. Uh, if you’re 16 years and older, as long as you have a car license, you can drive this, uh, without a motorcycle license here. And that makes that cheap transportation option a really good option. And that’s what this is. Now, there’s not a whole lot more to move up from there, but again, this is my first time seeing the Typhoon and I think it’s pretty impressive.
I’d like to see the dash update a little bit. Uh, the website mentions a USB port and I think that’s a good thing to have on a scooter as well. I’m not sure that it is on this unit cuz I can’t find it. So again, what I’m looking for from you is what do you want to know about this? I’ve gotta reach out to Piag because there are some questions I have about the information on their website currently as I’m filming this in early 2023. But if you have questions, let’s get your questions in as well so we can come back on this, uh, in the future and make an even more in-depth video cover all the questions that you have, all the questions that I have and we can talk more about this in the future. So let me know what kind of questions you have on the Typhoon and uh, I’ll make sure I come back. And of course, if you wanna see these bikes, uh, coming on down to Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where pretty much every Vespa, pretty much every liberty or Piaz, Gio, all the trim lines are in stock. And of course the new Typhoon 2023 model has just showed up for the first time. This is my first look at it. We’ll have more. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter and in this video we finally get our first look at a 2023 Vespa. This is the 2023 Vespa Primavera 50. Now we have a whole bunch of 2023 Vespas piling in here. So if you’re interested in all the new Vespas, make sure you hit subscribe right now because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, and they allow me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup so that I can make sure that I answer all the questions that you might have about vehicles like this and all sorts of other vehicles that I review. So every single day I’m gonna do a full in-depth review and you can let me know in the comments what you want to know about these vehicles and I’ll make sure that I answer you both in the comments and in future videos.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So this one here, our very first look at the 2023, let’s talk about it right now. So the first thing you need to know about this 50 cc scooter is filming here in New Brunswick in Canada. This is a bi, uh, a scooter that doesn’t require a full motorcycle license. If you’re over 16, if you have your car license, you can drive this without any extra licensing. If you are 14 in this province, you can actually write a test and drive this as well. So this is really a perfect second vehicle, especially in cities where you can use it to get around. You can use it to have some fun. And my very, very, very first motorcycle that I rode in when I grew up, it was 16, you could ride when I was 16, I had a scooter. And let me tell you, they are an absolute blast and that’s what this is really about.
And the nice thing about the Vespa is you’ve got a real history here. This is an iconic vehicle around the world. So you can have that as, for instance, your first vehicle or a vehicle that you can keep because whatever stage of life you’re in, these are super helpful to have around, especially as a second vehicle that’s really, really fuel efficient. That’s a lot of fun and it’s super stylish and apparently it steers itself. We’ll talk about that in a second here. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna focus on the features of this vehicle and kind of go through it in detail. It’s got a really cool blue pink color that unfortunately I’m inside. Can’t see the metallic sparkle here, but that’s kind of cool with all these vessels is they have that really good style to them that, you know, fresh automotive paint, that’s just really good quality.
So what we’re gonna do though is talk about the individual features that sort of benefit your life. And then I’m gonna finish up with sort of summarizing why this is a great vehicle to own. So stay with me as we go through some of the technical details to get to some of the more fun stuff. So the first thing I’m gonna start with here is the iconic wheel here. Now owning a Vespa is a lot like owning, owning a Porsche nine 11. These things have been refined and refined and refined over time, but they’re instantly recognizable for what they are. And one of the unique design details on the Vespa, which is different than a lot of other scooters is they don’t have a second fork tube down here, like a regular motorcycle or like a bicycle. We’re gonna show you the other side in a second here, but what you do have here is this nice 12 inch wheel. Now you can get larger wheels on scooters, but this is really nimble. And on a 50 cc I think this is, you know, perfectly good size. What’s cool about the tires
Here is if you look at something like, uh, you know, a Kawasaki motorcycle sitting just off camera beside me here, you have a little bit more tread in here than you would on something like some of those motorcycles, especially something like a sport motorcycle. But you do have the same profile here, nice rounded profile, so you’re gonna be able to lean into turns and that’s what makes it a lot of fun. And you’ve got really good traction here. But the extra tread here also means that this is really good for all weather. And when we talk about all weather, scooters are great for that because you’re able to sort of splash through the puddles and instead of having your feet hanging out on foot pegs, they’re in on floorboards and they’re protected by not just this fender, but also the overall body work. So this becomes a vehicle that, you know, you don’t wanna have to take it out in the rain, but if you do get stuck in the rain, you can actually stay pretty dry with just something like a raincoat on.
So cool, look here where you’ve got the rim on display. Let’s check the other side where the business side of things are and uh, we’ll show you some of the technology that’s in there. So over here on the left side, you’ve actually got quite a bit going on. First of all, you have modern disc brakes and these aren’t like bicycle disc brakes. These are true motorcycle style disc brakes. So they’re vented, uh, which is pretty great because it helps, uh, deal with the heat, it helps expansion and contraction, that kind of thing. And you can see their nice, uh, you know, the caliper grabs right there. And then you have this really sort of advanced suspension piece. You can see the spring, the shock in there and this kind of extra piece. So what this does is it’s a bit of an anti dive suspension.
So when you jam on the brakes, it’ll work with you to sort of not really dive down, but it is a sort of iconic look and that’s bolted on exactly like an automotive wheel would be allowing you to have everything here on this side and then that open wheel displayed on the other side. So kind of a cool system that’s actually quite advanced when you consider, uh, what it does and how it works with quality brakes, quality suspension, and again, all of it mounted just on that one side. So r works really well and it kind of looks interesting as well. Take a look at the rear wheel here. You have a lot of the same concept here. A lot of your componentry is all on one side. Now what’s cool here is all of your drive components from the engine two transmission and everything is actually right here as part of the swing arm.
So if you look at a normal motorcycle, usually this is just a bar sometimes with a chain involved in there, but you’ve actually got a drive system here that’s basically maintenance free, unlike a, um, maintenance free for you for sure, unlike a something like a motorcycle where you’ve gotta keep that chain lubed, especially if you’ve gone through a rainy day, it’s all sort of sealed up in here and you’ve got everything you need. And again, it’s mounted to this side with a suspension and drive train all through here. So it kind of a, it looks complicated, but it’s sort of a simple system, simple way to do things. And because the engine is mounted low here as well and all the heavy components are mounted low, you actually have a very easy motorcycle to drive. Again, most motorcycles have the engine way up higher in the frame. So all of the weight down low means that it’s very easy to handle. And we’ll show you that as we hop on there. But this is sort of just the one side, we’ll show you the other side as well. So I love showing this side as well. Of course you’ve got the wheel in the background there. It’s not actually mounted here to anything. You’ve got your, um, exhaust hanging here,
You nice big exhaust deals with emissions. But when we talk about fuel use, if you think about an engine as bringing air in, having the, you know, explosion to get the engine running and then bringing that air and gases out, look at how small this little tube is. So when you talk about fuel savings, this is really fuel savings without any high tech hybrid. You got a lightweight vehicle, very small engine that allows you just a little bit of fuel to burn and pass through there, which means you’re gonna really save on fuel and you can kind of see that in just the sort of the design here. And again, this bigger, um, engine here or bigger exhaust here helps also muffle this. So this is a very quiet vehicle to drive, which means when you’re driving it, you can hear what’s going on around, you can hear the birds chirping, you can hear other things, a really unobtrusive vehicle to have in the neighborhood here.
The other thing I’ll point out is that they all come with center stands. Center stands are pretty cool because they give you that stability, holds it nice and upright, you know, it’s not gonna tilt left or right. If you have soft ground you have to park on, it’s usually not a problem as well. And it actually lifts the rear wheel just a little bit off the ground. So you know, you’ve got that, uh, little bit of, uh, relaxed on the suspension there. But um, you know, if it, if you’re parking this in a garage with a lot of snow and salt in the winter, that kind of thing and keeps that wheel right off the ground so it’s not in contact with anything you don’t want it in contact with. So as I approach the scooter, you’re gonna find out one problem with the center stand.
If you park it in a showroom on a tile floor, it’s a little tricky to get off because normally has so, so much weight there, it kind of rolls off, but because the tile is a little slippery to it, I gotta keep my toe right near it, pull it off. You can see it’s pretty easy to do if it’s on concrete or anything else. It doesn’t slide or anything like that. You don’t have to put your toe underneath it, but you can see this is very easy to control because again, that weight is down low. It’s a very unintimidating vehicle and you don’t have to lift your leg way over the top on the back. You can simply slide your, uh, legs across there, easy step through and it’s a fairly wide vehicle, but even if, uh, you’re shorter than me, you can sit much further forward or you can stand across and jump back up here.
So you’ve got a really wide platform here that’s comfortable even for larger riders and that’s pretty rare in the motorcycling world to have a small engine, really efficient vehicle that actually fits someone like myself who’s around a six footer. So you can see here if I put it back on the center stand and I’ll show you how easy that is, just uh, tow on the, uh, on the center stand, couple fingers here on the rail that wraps across and it very easily pops right back up. And you can see when I sit on it here, very comfortable and you can see if you have, if you’re looking for weather protection, you’ve got wind protection here as well. So on the cold, cold days, you can still drive this with protection from the wind that stays plenty warm, a nice uh, jacket and you’re good to go.
If you really want a more protection, you can add an accessory windshield up here. But when you’re sitting here, whether you’re or short, it’s really nice and the mirrors are mounted close to your body and they happen to be wide angle mirrors. So they say objects and mirror are closer than they appear just like the right side mirror on your car would be. And that means that because they’re close and because they’re sort of slightly wide angle, they allow you to have a really good view of what’s around you and what’s around. So you feel very safe in traffic. You also sit relatively tall sort of SUV height, so you’ve got a good commanding view of the road and absolutely no blind spots wherever you are. So kind of a great place to sort of see the scenery. So CD position, comfortable, you’ve got space for a second person, but let’s start taking a look at the dash here and then we’re gonna work into the storage compartment and the practical uses of this bike.
So I’m filming this on a little bit of an angle so you can just sort of see everything. You’ve got a little bit of studio like glare going on if I move it the wrong way. But as you can see that everything comes to life here. Now don’t be fooled by speedometer, that goes to 80 kilometers an hour. There are two engines that can go in this. If you have a spammer that goes up to one 40, it’s gonna go right around a hundred kilometers an hour. If this speedometer goes up to about 80 or so, it’s gonna be in that 50 60 kilometer hour range for a top speed with the 50 cc engine. So this is not highway capable with the 50 cc engine, but certainly country highway capable with that one 50 cc engine is an option. Again, we’re looking at the 50 cc today.
Down here you’ve got a very simple dash fuel gauge in there, easy to read, you’ve got trip A, trip B, and the regular odometer here and that’s it. You can see zero kilometers on this thing. This thing was just assembled for us and uh, uh, right outta the crate and sent to us here in the video bay. So simple, simple dash, but clear and easy to read. Now let’s take a look at some of the controls that you have on this bike. On the left handlebar here on a regular motorcycle, this would be a clutch lever, but this is exactly like a bicycle. This is a brake. So if you’re used Tori riding a bicycle, you can get on and ride this right away. There’s no gear shift changes, no anything else. You just twist the right side throttle. And this one is your brake.
So this would be your, uh, rear brake because there’s no foot pedal brake on this one. Now over here you have simple switches for high beam and low beam. Right there you have your signal switches, which can be turned on and canceled. And you’re horn down here kind of nicely set on chrome here. We’re gonna talk about the headlight in a second. It is a L e d headlight, which are really bright, uh, clean white light, we’ll talk about that in a second. But all your controls are right there. Let’s go to the right side and check out those controls. Now, right side fav everybody’s favorite control, this is your throttle twist and go. And that’s it. So that’s full off. That’s full on and that’s all you need to drive this. You’ve got a brake, like a bicycle. This is a kill switch which is required for every motorcycle.
You can uh, turn it off with key, but this will kill the engine off right away. And then of course that mode button was cycling through trip A, trip B and odometer right here. And this is how you start it. So you make sure this is on turn, the key on press that it starts right up nice and quiet. So we mentioned the lighting up front and I’ll show you down here, there are three little lights in here. None of this is on right now, but I just sort of wanna let you know before we turn it on. Three little lights down here, three little lights down there. They’re like your daytime running lights for whatever reason, they don’t film very accurately, but they are there. They do create some nice light and they won’t look great on film. You’ve got incandescent signal lights up here and then your headlight up here.
So we’re gonna turn the bike to the on position and you can see your headlight right away comes to life there. If we go to signal, we can sort of see your left side signal, uh, your right side signal there, we can kill that right there. And then your high beam light, again, this is a bright white L e d light, high beam light right there. Again, I’m not sure if the camera lined up to see a whole lot of more brightness in there, but you should be able to see the difference in the lighting there. Now one thing to keep in mind with l e d headlights is, first of all they’re bright, they’re excellent. Um, a lot of that is just good, but that bright white light because of the color of it, it’s closer in color to daylight, which means when it’s shining on something, it helps your brain recognize what it is more easily than something that would be more yellow tinted like a halogen headlight.
So really big safety feature for your own visibility and for being seen as well. Very, very good there. We’ll show you the taillight while we’re at it. Same thing with the taillight, as you would find with the front lights, they don’t film perfectly. This in, uh, person looks like a much more even kind of circular, uh, area there that’s evenly lit. It just, uh, looks a little brighter on the bottom just again because of the way the taillight’s filming there. But brake light there as well, instant on, instant off, that is a full l e d light. And again, it’s hard to show the brightness on camera, but it is absolutely very, very bright. These here, they’re just reflectors, they’re just style. And again, signal lights down low down there as well. Easy to see, uh, flashing signals right there. So you know, very good lighting on this vehicle. So now let’s talk practicality. This scooter is very, very practical, certainly for a motorcycle, extremely practical.
Visible parts of the, the body work as part of the frame. So you’ve got this big area here where it allows some steering to come down, but this is part of the frame that’s part of what makes these vespas just really, uh, solid feeling On the road. So one interesting thing in this, uh, component here is there is a USB charge port right there. So this is the kind of storage area you’re gonna use for your wallet, your sunglasses likely your phone as well because you can also keep that charged with the GPS in there. And if you wanna wear some earbuds or something like that or have a communicator of some sort, you can even get your GPS to speak to you even though it’s hidden in there. So lots of things you can do, uh, with that. And of course having the usb obviously keeping your devices charged is handy.
So one thing I wanna point out here on this particular model is this really cool colored seat. Now if you come into the showroom here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports, there are so many scooters here and so many vespas and the the key piece with Vespas is that there are subtle style differences between all the different ones. So this one here has a sort of textured seat up here. You’ve got the nice stitching through here. Uh, some of ’em have sort of like a racing stripe look down the middle. Some of ’em have uh, several ribs across here. Every seat is a little bit different. Uh, this one’s not filming perfectly identical to the color I can tell by looking at it with my eyes and looking at it through the camera. There’s a slight difference in color, but it really does compliment this blue very nicely in person.
Now on a 50 cc Vespa, you have a little keyhole here on a one 50 cc. You won’t have this keyhole here, you’ll have a button on the dash here, but this of course opens up. So let’s just show you what that’s like. Opens up there and you have this big huge storage container here. Now what’s cool about Vespas is you can actually take it out and clean it there. So that’s your whole storage department. Underneath there is your engine, which is fun to take a look at. But this compartment is very, very large. It tucks in there nicely right there. And you can fit a three quarter face helmet. Now I would bet I could probably fit my full face helmet in here. Depends on the full face helmet that you have. Um, but certainly a lot of storage. So here’s what you’re gonna use this for.
All of your day-to-day stuff that you’re doing when you’re running around, you can stick it in here while you’re driving. Now keep in mind it can get a little warm, so you don’t wanna stick your, uh, you know, your sandwich in there for three hours when you’re driving around. Uh, but yeah, that is a storage part compartment that you can use that is lockable. Now you have a couple options when you get to your destination, you can take a bag out of there or put it all in a bag and pull the bag right out. Take that in with you and lock your helmet in there. However, you can also lock your helmet on these little tabs here. If you have a little D-ring helmet, you can hang the D-ring there. You can shut the, um, the uh, seat and the helmet can hang on the side of the bike right here or right there on the side using that D-ring to secure it.And you can still have this as lockable storage if you want to add more. This little loop around here can be replaced with a, uh, mounting bracket for a rear, uh, cargo box type thing. That can u be used as a backrest for your passenger as well as extra cargo storage. So for a motorcycle, you have tons of storage here. The other nice thing right here is where you fill it with fuel. You don’t need a whole lot of fuel in this thing. It doesn’t, uh, burn a whole lot, but you do also have it underneath the seat, which means that it’s lock able secure, it’s away from everybody. It’s super simple. All right, so now let’s have a real true, honest conversation. Most of the things I showed you, they’re kind of boring. I mean, sure it’s practical. The reason you buy any vehicle, at least this is my opinion, but especially something like a scooter is because you like it. And there’s something that’s super cool about Vespa being around them every day, being able to sit on ’em, use ’em, drive ’em, they’re an absolute blast to drive. And I showed you all the rest of the stuff because you need to justify this. It has to also work for you as a regular vehicle. Does it work in the rain? Absolutely. Does it work to carry your stuff around to go to work, go to school, do those kind of things? Absolutely. Is it safe? Yes, you feel very safe up here. You’ve got those wide angle mirrors mounted close, you know, it’s not that much more that much faster than, you know, a very fast bicyclist. So you’re really not going crazy speeds. It’s not like you’re, you know, being blown
Away like would on a sport bike where you have to just a, your brain has to adapt to a whole different speed capability. What this does though is it effortlessly takes you around town in something stylish, gives you reasons to go out. You’re not using enough fuel to even worry about it or think about it. You’ll go on those trips and the same way a motorcyclist will set out across the country to explore the country. You can go explore your town on this and find reasons to ride. And people on scooters do, I mean I used to own one and I would love to have another one because there’s so much fun to just easily hop on and go around town. They’re an absolute blast of ride. And the nice thing with the Vespa is you’re buying something that is truly iconic. If you buy it as a young kid, you can keep it in the family, other people can ride it in your household, but you can keep it for years and years and years and years and years. And people do. There’s a reason these things are iconic. The shape isn’t really gonna go outta style or anything of that. They’re gonna stay with this. But it’s just such a fun vehicle. It’s fun to look at. It’s a conversation piece, whether it’s sitting around at a barbecue in your driveway or whether you’re going out around town, swinging through the library, the stores, the shops, whatever it is you’re doing, they’re an absolute blast. And there’s a whole bunch of ’em here at Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals. So who is it for? I always kind of finish these videos with who’s it for? You wanna take a single person or two people? You can do that on here. Somebody who wants to have fun on something that’s easy to ride, practical and just a lot of fun. That’s who it’s for. Whether you’re a 14 year old that needs to get to school and maybe your parents don’t wanna have to drive you around everywhere.
( You can do that here in New Brunswick. Whether you are someone with a car license that just needs an extra vehicle in your house. Something a little to either have fun with or maybe to also be practical to use that as a second or third or extra vehicle and around. It fits in the garage easily. It fits in the driveway easily, wherever you want to put it. If you are storing outside, you can get a cover for it and keep it nice and pristine looking so many options. And then you join part of an iconic group of people literally around the world that drive, uh, Vespas as well. So here at Jim Gilbert’s powerSports, this is our very first 2023 Vespa. There are still 2022 s around here. So if you’re looking at this and you just want a little bit of a discount, 2020 twos, actually there’s one sitting right over here that’s the identical color.
So there’s lots of options here to come in. And again, it’s March in 2023 right now. You can walk through the Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports showroom and see all kinds of scooters. I’m looking at, there’s five there. There’s another five there, there’s three more there. There’s uh, three more there. I’m just in one section. I’m not even in the main showroom. They’re everywhere. You can compare the different styles, you can check ’em all out. And if you want to have some fun this summer, maybe it’s time for a Vespa. Thanks everybody for watching. Let me know what you think. If you ride a Vespa, lemme know when the comments, what you love about it. If you’ve had a scooter in the past, tell me all the fun things you’ve done with it. Uh, maybe I should do a video of all the fun things I can do. Maybe I should do a video of all the fun things I can do in Fredericton with these things I’ll love to see. Let me know what you wanna see and, uh, continue to watch. Make sure you hit subscribe. We’ll talk to you in the next one.
Hi everybody it’s Peter, and in this video we’re gonna talk about touring scooters. And we have two options here which we can go over in detail. And I’ve done individual videos on each of these bikes. So if you wanna know more about, you have a couple of options. First of all, you can check out those other videos that I’ve done to go in depth to some of the things that I won’t touch on on this video. But if you have questions about either of these vehicles, let me know in the comments below because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where they give me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup and I can make sure that I come back to your questions in the comments section and in future video. So let’s get going. This is the BV 400, it’s a Piaggio scooter, and that is a Vespa, technically also a Piaggio scooter, that’s the Vespa GTS Super Tech.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
Both of these scooters are filled with tech. Both of them are fully highway capable. These are not just in town around town type scooters. They can go out on the open road. This one has a little extra accessories, we’ll talk about that. You can get accessories on the other one as well. And each of them are well suited to different types of riding. But more importantly, these are scooters where you can go long distance and tour on. So we’re gonna talk about the types of touring that each of these would be best at and we’re gonna give a little bit of love to the Beverly. This is not known as the Beverly in North America, it’s just the BV 400, but throughout the world it is known as that. And throughout the world, this is a fairly popular scooter. But the reason I’m doing this video is to throw a little shade on the Vespa. I love the Vespa and this one outsells this one here in Fredericton New Brunswick at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. But that one is good for a couple specific things and this one can do a few things more. So we’re gonna get a little extra love to this bike because like I said, I think it deserves a little more respect and sometimes we give it. So let’s get going with the full comparison review. So the first thing I’m gonna do is just hop on these scooters so you can see the size comparison because a lot of people see this Vespa and they confuse it for the 50 cc or one 50 cc models. This one is much larger, but it’s not as large as the BV 400. So both of these scooters are equipped with side stands and that’s what they’re on right now.
They also have center stand, standard center stands standard. So you can also, uh, stand up with that. Now scooters can appear to be fairly tall because of a fairly wide seat. If you’re shorter, you can just stand a little forward. Uh, but I’m gonna sit sort of where I’m comfortable here and you can see I’m flatfooted and easy if I sit in the riding position, my right foot up there, you can see very square here. Now, couple benefits to a scooter like this virtual of all the style, we’re gonna talk about that a little bit later in the video. You’ve got lots of leg room here and because of the way the seat is, even though it curls up there is kind of where the seat is curled up and how far back I could sit. But you can easily sit forward and be just as comfortable. You could stretch a little bit further back because it’s relatively level. If you just wanted to stretch out on a longer ride, you do have that option on this seat because again, right behind my rear end here, it’s only a slight lip. It’s not too much. But overall size, very good. If you wanted a windshield on this, you can get that as an accessory. If you wanted a rear rack, you could get that as an accessory. But let’s just jump across to the BV 400 right now. Jumping across here, couple of things that are different, a little bit taller tunnel to to step across. This bike is also a little bit heavier. Now it’s not unreasonably he heavy, it’s got the weight down low. There’s a whole bunch of regions that does that. But you can see when I put my seat back, I am up against a taller lip here behind, um, behind where I am here.
So my ability to move back on this one is a little bit more limited overall, the width seems similar, maybe a tiny bit wider at the front flip pegs because this one curls in where my legs are. So putting my legs straight down, I’ve got some extra ability to go nice and tight to the bike here, but there’s a little bit less room to stretch out. That being said, this is a fairly tall windshield and it’s very close to where I am. This is standard equipment on this bike. So obviously that’s gonna have some advantages for taking the wind off yourself at a higher speed. So a little more precise seating position here where a little bit more flexibility on the Vespa. But yeah, that’s kind of a seating position and it is a difference between these two bikes. So let’s start by looking at the Vespa GTS 300. Now this happens to be a super tech. The super Tech has a different dash here, but you can get this in various things like the super sport or other kinds. Again, if you’re planning on touring with this, you can get a back rack here, which has a backrest. I’ll show you a picture of what that looks like on a super sport that we have in stock here as well right now. So you can see that on your screen. But then you also have, uh, the seat here and again, windshield you could put on there as well. So Vespa is limited in some ways by their classic lines. Now personally I’m a huge fan of the style of this. I think it looks like the classic small Vespa, but obviously it is larger, but it does not stay stuck in time. It’s still a fully modern vehicle
.
So where the BV 400 is gonna have a frame with body work, part of the frame of this is quite visible here on this to for that rigidity, you do have an L e D headlight here, have an L e D headlight on that one. Uh, the round mirrors here are sort of the throwback style, but something should be said about round mirrors. They’re, uh, both the wide angle. So they say objects and mirror are closer than they, than they appear. Both of them will have those wide angle mirrors, but the styling of these round ones say what you want about fancy style mirrors. These round ones are still pretty good for visibility. So overall you’ve got, uh, that I do wanna show you, uh, the passenger seating accommodations here because this is gonna make a difference in your touring ability of a bike like this.
So again, we’re gonna hop on, we’re on the center stand now, so I can do this relatively safely, but you can see here when I put my feet on the foot pegs back here and I sit back here on the rear seat, this is a little bit of a smaller rear seat and the foot pegs are necessary because my heels come a little bit out. I’m against the body work here and you know, it is what it is. So if you are touring on this type of scooter, it’s probably a little better suited to single person touring than the BV 400. Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t take this two people touring. It absolutely is capable of that. Uh, but to me you have a 300 cc engineer, a 400 cc engineer. The BV 400 is class leading power, both in horsepower and in torque.
It’s stepped up from what used to be a three 50 to a 400, whereas this 300, again, it, it’s moved its way up over the generations as well. But this 300 is still a little bit down on power to that bike. Now this is a little bit lighter, so you have that power to weight ratio as well, but you still have better power to weight ratio on that bike. So again, can you tour with two people? Absolutely. To me, if I’m touring with two people, although you’ll still be able to keep up on a interstate or a major freeway type highway, this is a bike that is better suited to those country roads touring. And to me, I would prefer to tour as a just a single rider on something like this because you have a little bit more comfort with the space behind you and with the engine. So again, can you tour? Absolutely. Now, the benefit of touring on a scooter is not just the overall protection here. If it gets rainy or wet or whatever, you’ve got your legs protected here with a taller windscreen up here, you’re gonna have your body protected from both wind and weather and like cool weather especially. But it’s also twist and go. There’s no gear shifting to be done. No clutch lever, no gear shift, it’s twist and go. It’s simple, simple, simple to ride so you can really enjoy what’s going on around you. And that’s a big benefit to touring on a scooter. It’s super simple. It’s got some of that practicality of a touring bike built in. If you look at the big huge touring bikes that are out there, the massive ccs, you know, they’re not very nimble, they’re not great once they get to town, but they do have things like wind protection and all that built in just like this.
So you can tour on a scooter. Now let’s just take the same position we have here and we’ll throw ourselves on the BV 400 and talk about some of those features as well. So moving to the BV 400, this is a much larger bike. The first thing you’re gonna notice is the larger wheels. Now it looks even more exaggerated because you can see the entire front wheel. This is a 16 inch front wheel. So a modern sport bike tire, the diameter across the rim would be 17 inches. This is a 16 inch and it’s got good width, certainly much larger than the Vespa 300 that we just showed you in the back. It is not a 16 inch wheel, it’s a smaller wheel. It’s a 14 inch diameter wheel in the back, but again, much wider than the Vespa. For reference, the Vespa has 12 inch wheels. So bigger wheels are gonna give you probably some more stability. And again, it’s not limited by style, it allows itself to be something fresh, something new. So sitting on here, again, we’re gonna sit just in the driver’s position here. You still have the foot pegs that pop out and they come out like that. So a little bit less fancy design, I can’t quite reach it. These ones are rubber mounted on here as well. We’re on the center stand, so we’re gonna jump
Over here and put our feet on the pedal. Now again, this one has the backrest on because it has a top bunk, you can get that on the vessel as well. My feet position is a little bit better, so my, my heels are not pressed against the body work. I have some ability to move a little bit here I am very upright, but that’s fine. And there’s still plenty of space for the rider. The other nice thing here is I’m sitting taller than the rider, significantly taller up. So if you were similar in height, you could see over. Now most people are passengers, oftentimes shorter than them and uh, then you’re still looking around, but you still have a better overall seating position from the passenger. So rear passenger space is good. We’ll put these back with my feet. There we go. Sitting here again, those wide angle mirrors are here.
These are a smaller mirror. So although they’re perfectly positioned in great visibility, they are a little bit smaller than the vespas. So gonna give the Vespa the wind on mirrors. As far as the windshield here, again, I mentioned very large, very close, kind of equal on both as well because you’ve got the ability. Now this one is built into this without having to pay any extra from the factory. You just get it, it comes like that. The dash we’re gonna talk about in a second. They both have good digital dashes. The Vespas probably a little bit more stylish, but it’s just because I pulled the Super Tech. If you had the super sport, it’s gonna have a little bit more of a basic dash. But again, we’ll talk about that as we get there. You’re gonna notice more buttons here and more modern buttons. We’ll show you those as well. But there’s some connectivity things you can do here, um, with your modes. Uh, both of them have uh, track or both of ’em have abs. This one’s got traction control as well. The overall seating position on this, it feels much more like a touring bike. You still have that wind protection and those kind of things, but the seating position and everything else feels closer to a touring bike. So if you are going with a second person, this one’s gonna give you more space. If you are going on a longer trip, I think this one’s probably gonna be a little bit more comfortable for that on a longer trip, especially with the bigger wheels, a little bit more power as well. And again, highway capable, not an issue on this. We always look at motorcycles on a 400 cc motorcycle would be a smaller motorcycle, but the way things are geared can really depend.This is not gonna accelerate as fast as something like a Ninja 400, but it’s also gonna be fairly comfortable out on the highway. Whereas you know, the Ninja 400 is gonna have six gears manual transmission that you’re gonna roll through this one. Same thing as the Vespa, it’s twist and go super simple. So let’s take a look at the dash. Let’s take a look at some of the storage compartments on these and help you decide which one works for you. So taking a look at the dash on here, to get to this dash, you have to use the keyless entry. Now it has a switch for the ignition, but this is a keyless entry type key, much like your car. So we’ll show you the switch instead of a push button start. It’s kind of a, a dial knob that you turn just like a key, but it’s just a knob. Show you that a little bit later. This dash is very, very motorcycle like to me. So of course you have your fuel gauge, your range, your temp outside temperature, you’ve got a time, uh, uh, kilometers on here. You’ve got temperature gauge and you have a tachometer. Now a tachometer is not something you traditionally need On something that you don’t have to shift gears for yourself, but it does give you a sense of how hard the engine is working. So of course if it’s revving like way up, then you know that maybe you’re, you know, pushing it harder than you want or sometimes you know, into the wind or that kind of thing. So it really gives you kind of the information you need as a touring bike. And again, just a black and white dash, but it is a digital system that works quite well. So lots more features we could show you here. We’ll probably save that for another video, uh, if you’re interested. So let me know in the comments if you’re interested in seeing more of the dash on either of these. You’ve got the asr, we’re gonna show you some of those buttons right there. It’s flashing up here.
We’re gonna show you the left side controls and talk about that right now. So that flashing ASR light is right here. That’s part of your traction control. So I didn’t turn the bike fully on, uh, but this is basically an anti-slip system so you can uh, turn that on and off or toggle it, toggle it on and off from your, um, from your uh, handlebars here. This is the left side handlebar on a motorcycle. There would be a clutch in front of here, but this is actually your break. So just like a bicycle, that would be your rear brake on uh, this one here. And then you’ve got a little button here to pop your fuel door, a button here to pop the seat. You’ve got your high beams, which you can just flash to pass. And again, those are l e D lights and then you can lock in your high beam as well. So whatever you wanna do there, signal lights there, nice, easy to control left, right and turn it on and off. And then you’ve got the horn down there. So simple motorcycle controls, everything’s within reach, but good feeling switch here and fairly large buttons. I don’t know if it’s sort of easy to see, but you’ve got good size buttons here. That’s just easy to get to. We’re gonna switch to the other side now and show you the controls over there. So right side handlebar, this is your throttle, that’s just how you make it go. There’s no gear shifting, no clutch on the other hand, no nothing. Just twist and go. So super simple hazard lights up here. Some cell phone connectivity down here. Uh, kill switch, which is required by every motorcycle. A mode to cycle through some of the modes in the dash, like I said, if you wanna see that, we can make another video of that. And the start button. And of course your brake lever right out here, that’s exactly the same as a regular motorcycle. So simple, easy to use controls, very simple bike to use, but still sort of an advanced bike overall. Take a look at the Vespa gts. Now remember this is the Super Tech. So this has a digital display screen here, which we’re gonna show you in a second, but before we do, we’ll show you the key. This is a traditional key, so you have that. Now the super tech that I’m showing you is, uh, like I said, shows this digital screen, so we’ll just turn it to the on position. You can see that screen come to life there even through the glare. I sort of left the glare in the corner. You can see that even in like intense glare from the studio lights here, you can still see that screen through. (14:25 In fact, you can even see it better than the warning lights. Now in person of course glare isn’t as bad as when you’re filming. There’s a number of features in this, um, display screen as well that we can go through. And we’ll probably say that also for another video. But you’ve got your basic, your outside temperature, uh, clock in there, your speedometer and you can have various settings down here, um, for your, um, uh, times other stuff, fuel efficiency, all kinds of stuff. So you have a number of settings in there that you can go through. The super tech is the one that gives you this display screen. This the regular super sport bike. So same engine, um, it is just the traditional gauge cluster, so it’s much less. I could have showed you that one, but again, to be as fair in the comparison as I can, this would be sort of the competitive screen. Now this one is certainly more pleasing to look at as far as the color screen and uh, those kind of things, but I don’t know that it gives you any advantage one way or the other. The other screen is still very good. And again, without a tachometer in here, you don’t really need one again on anything that you don’t have to shift gears, but the other one does give you a sense of how hard the engine’s working. This one, you’re just gonna be able to have to decide that with your ears. So when we talk about listening to these bikes, they are both fairly quiet, they’re both very, uh, sort of emissions friendly. Euro five compliant for sure on the BV 400, I think this is at least Euro four or Euro five here on the Vespa. But I’m showing you this little, uh, tailpipe there and the exhaust here because you can sort of see comparison wise, this is not a huge tailpipe, it’s a single exhaust here. The BV 400 really goes with a much more motorcycle style look, which we’ll show you right now. So the BV 400, it is a large exhaust and it’s actually a dual exhaust. You can sort of see the two there. Now they are a single cylinder, uh, scooter. So it’s not like it has two cylinders to exhaust, that kind of thing, but you have a dual exhaust there. Again, they’re not necessarily tied down to a certain look or a certain style, so they can give you a little different, uh, feel there and uh, that’s how you get to that sort of emissions compliance and that kind of thing. It’s a styling decision that they make at some point as well. And uh, I don’t hate it, but it is definitely a very large exhaust. It looks just sort of plastic panel from the side. So it’s not like it’s the end of the world, but uh, it’s certainly a big design piece when you look at it from the right hand side of the scooter. We’re gonna talk about storage in a second, but I wanna show you the wheels here. Now the Vespa, of course, is open on this side. This one has the, uh, fork tubes on both sides. You can see the brakes here are much larger to go along with the larger wheels. You’ve just basically have a higher speed capable vehicle here, uh, with those very large brakes and the fairly large tires here as well. So just give you a look there. You still, even though you have the tube down here, you still get a pretty good look at the wheels. Let’s check out the Vespa side of things right now. Over here on the Vespa, you’ve got that traditional Vespa style. So the whole suspension setup is on the other side, a little bit smaller disc breaks through there, but you do get to see the entire wheel here. Uh, both of these have very good, very capable tires, but you can see the difference here. This is a 12 inch diameter, that one was a 16. So there is absolutely a difference there. Now when you’re riding, I want, don’t wanna say this is poor riding in any way. This is a still a very good, very capable, very stable vehicle because of the way it’s designed, the stiffness of the frame. But larger tires are used on most motorcycles for a reason. And uh, you know, adventure bikes go with a 19 inch front, uh, diameter wheel. So the more off-road and bumpier terrain you’re gonna have, usually you want a little bit larger wheel. So it’s just something to keep in mind. Um, again, I love, I think they ride great, but the Beverly, the BV 400 is designed for a little bit more high speed as well as potentially a little bit more advantages in larger bumps. So if we’re gonna talk about these as touring motorcycles, I think the Vespa is best suited as a day tour with its undereat stores. Now again, this is much larger undersea storage than on the, uh, typical Vespa. So you do have quite a bit of space. You could fit sort of three quarter face helmets in here and that’s gonna be your sort of day-to-day storage. Now if you’re actually touring for any length of time, you’re going to want to add the back, uh, top box, which again, we show it in the video on the BV 400, but it’s an option there. It’s the same thing. It’s an option here. One thing to keep in mind is this undersea storage is directly above the engine there and there’s no extra insulation or anything in here. This is just a sort of a easy to clean type uh, box. I don’t believe it comes out on the BB 400. We’ll double check that, but it does come out here. But something to keep in mind is because it’s above your engine, it is not a cool place to store things. So you’re gonna have to keep that in mind. If you have things you need to keep cool, uh, you may want that top box even just for that reason. But again, lockable storage here, great, uh, place. And if you have a full face helmet that you want to carry along with this bike and it’s not gonna fit fully in here, there’s a little uh, tab right there. You can sort the D-ring over there, shut the seat and the, the helmet can hang off the side of the bike. So you still have a way to lock the helmet to the bike, even if it’s a full face helmet and it won’t fit perfectly underneath there. Take a look at the BV 400, we’ve got the lights on right now. That’s okay. Inside is another light here. So you do have a little advantage here with a little lighted storage area. This does appear to me to be wider. There is no way to come in and outta here. You have a toolbox or a tool kit sitting right here at the very front and because of the sort of the way the engine sits and the larger rear wheel, you do have a little bit of an intrusion there with that larger rear wheel. So what you gain in overall, uh, you know, riding capability or riding pleasure I suppose in that larger rear wheel, it does dig into potential storage here. Now both of these are pretty big. Again, I think it’s larger. I haven’t checked the volume of each of these out. Uh, but again, volume’s gonna be good in both. But again, you’re really gonna probably want a top box for those overnight tours and that’s why this one comes equipped with that. Wanna address the lighting on both these bikes really briefly because both these bikes are turned to the on position but not running. Now on these smaller Vespa scooters, there are, there are usually three L e d lights in here as daytime running lights and you have your signals up here. As you can see here, we’ve got signals down there and they are incandescent signals here. I can’t flash the high beam or run the uh, headlight for you unless I start it up and because we’re indoors, I’m not gonna do that right now. But this is a bright white L e D light over on the BV 400. I also have it running and although they don’t show very well on camera, these are very bright daytime running lights down here. And you have l e D signals right over here. This one does allow me to flash that high beam there, which you can probably see a little bit in your camera is also very bright, very, And of course that whiter light on both of these bikes allows your brain to sort of see things the way they would normally see them in daylight. That white l e d light is not only cleaner and whiter and a lot of people prefer that. It also is something that is closer to daylight in color, which means as you see things along this road, whether it’s a rock or a rabbit or something like that, you’re gonna be able to identify it very quickly because your brain is used to seeing things in that type of color of light. So those are very good headlights on both these bikes. Really no advantage on either one. They both had that L E D I do like the L e D signal lights, although I don’t know if that makes a huge difference. You know, it just does look a little bit different.
So we titled this video and we started talking to our both these as touring scooters and I stand by that and the Vespa is the one that people sort of step up to and say, Hey, this is a real motorcycle replacement for me. This one is well known. To be fair, we’re our own worst enemies here. We have buried this bike deeper in our showroom. It’s probably not advertised as much as the Vespa, but this is the better scooter for those types of touring type things. Now I love the Vespa look and to me, I would absolutely do sort of weekend long day trips on this. You could go overnight absolutely, but again, probably as a single person, when you start getting into taking a lot of extra luggage and a little bit of extra weight, perfectly fine to take two people around on a Saturday afternoon, Saturday morning, head to some coffee shops and a whole bunch of small towns stop for some pizza, that kind of thing.
This is fantastic for that. However, it just can’t be ignored that this bike is better at all of those things and it allows you to go further distances. It allows you to take more gear, more people, it has more power, a little bit, probably better information on the dash that tachometer, again, not something you need for a kind of, you’re around town driving, but if you were doing extended driving on the highway, knowing roughly how hard you’re working that engine is something worth knowing. Having the standard windshield, uh, is nice. Again, backrest you can do on both these. It just depends on what you want to do. But every time I come back to this scooter, I’m impressed with it purely from its features. Usually you don’t buy a vehicle just based on spec sheet alone. You have some sort of connection to it that you just, you generally like it and that’s why Vespa sells so well. It’s hard not to like a Vespa 300 GTS vs. Piaggio BV 400 Beverly is probably better equipped as that touring scooter. So if you are considering a motorcycle, two-wheel transportation where you can do some weekend trips, some day-to-day stuff, and of course use these every day, both of these are gonna be very good in the wheels and deals lineup here. Probably the only motorcycle that would compare with these would be the versus X 300. It’s also a 300 cc motorcycle. It is a six speed transmission. It’s gonna rev a lot. It is a manual transmission, but it does come with available side luggage and it is a smaller CC bike that is capable of touring. Again, on that bike, probably best is a single person tourer, which again shows the versatility of something like this very versatile bike. And again, tell me if you’re touring on your Vespa or you’re touring on the BV 400, let me know what your experience is like if you own either of these. And again, if you wanna see more videos, make sure you let me know when the comments because here at Jim Gilberts PowerSports I can come back to these vehicles again and again. So thanks everybody for watching and uh, we’ll talk to you in the next one.
PETER IS HERE WITH AN IN-DEPTH COMPARISON BETWEEN THE RACING VESPA SPRINT SIXTIES AND ITS STYLISHLY PRACTICAL COUNTERPART, THE PRIMAVERA TOURING. LET’S SEE WHICH ONE COMES OUT ON TOP!
Hi, everybody, it’s Peter and this one’s gonna be a fun one. In this video, I’m gonna compare two Vespas that really show you what having a Vespa is all about. So this is the, both of these are 50 cc. This is the Vespa pr, uh, the Sprint, excuse me, racing sixties and the Vespa Primavera Touring models. So these are very similar in sort of mechanical things, but there’s a number of styling differences just because of Primavera and a sprint. And then there’s a number of differences with these specific models that make them pretty cool and also very practical. So I’m looking forward to showing you all about this. But if you wanna know more about Vespa scooters and I don’t answer it in this video, make sure you let me know when the comments below because I’ll come back to these with future videos. And the reason I can come back to these vehicles over and over again and show you all kinds of vespas, because there’s literally dozens of them right around me, right here at a whole bunch more in the other part of our 20,000 square foot showroom here at Jim Gilbert’s Powersports gives me complete access to their vehicle line so that I can answer your questions both in the comment section and in video. So make sure you hit subscribe if you’re interested in any of these things. And let’s get through, let’s get going with review. So we’re gonna start with this one right here. So one of the things I absolutely love about Vespa is the attention to detail in everything and including in these special editions, these style sort of packages. You just can’t get these from any other scooter packages and it’s kind of what it means to buy a Vespa, to get something that’s unique and something that’s special and again, that attention to detail. So first of all, sprint and Primavera. I’ve done videos in these in the past. The biggest difference with the Primavera is you’re gonna have this sort of hexagonal type, uh, uh, headlight here. More of a squared off headlight versus a round headlight. You’re gonna have the same thing instead of round mirrors over there, you’re gonna have this different sort of shaped mirrors.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
We’re gonna get closer up and look at these in the future. And the powertrain is basically the same. What I love about this one is all of this package, as you see it just sort of comes like this and we’re gonna come a little closer to see some of the details. But you’ve got those gold wheels instead of having chrome everywhere, this one’s all blacked out. So the grab rail back here is blacked out. The side trims here are blacked out, even around the headlight and a little bit of a sort of, you know, spoiler in front of your instrument cluster is all blacked out. The whole thing just works really well together and it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t show up great on camera, but it’s really visually interesting when you get up close to it. It’s just fun to look at. And of course that makes it fun to ride. It’s also very practical. Scooters have tons of storage. You’ve got undersea storage here, you’ve got storage in around here and you’ve got this one here with an extra package that uh, or an extra uh, box in the back that allows you to take all kinds of things. Both of these are lockable. This is lockable, that’s lockable and in here. So mix for a very practical motorcycle type thing. And because it’s 50 cc here in New Brunswick, if you’re 14 years old, you can ride a test and you can ride these if you’re 16 years old or older, you can just run this on a regular car license. You don’t need a special license to drive
These means. It’s an extra way to add a really fun vehicle that’s really practical, really fuel efficient and has a lot of style and history. So lemme show you a couple features on this one and then I’m gonna show you the touring model, which is completely different but still has a lot of the same practicality, just a whole different style of and way of doing basically the same thing. So let’s show you some of the cool details up front on this one first. So let’s start by looking at the shape here. We mentioned that sort of hexagonal, trapezoidal, different shape. It’s not around headlight, that’s all I know. I should have paid more attention to math class for the exact shape of this. But you’ve got the black trim here, which from the driver’s angle you see more of that black from the front, you see less of it. The neck tie down here has some striping that sets it apart. We’ll show you that. I wanna show you the lighting as well. Now some of the lighting’s gonna be harder to see than others. I’m not sure if the, uh, headlight will skew the camera here. Let’s just sort of see, oh, that still works pretty good. So you can see down here in the camera you’ve got three little lights down here. It doesn’t display as well on camera as it does in person here, but these give you some presents. It’s kinda like a daytime running light on a modern car. They have kind of that cool look here, the headlight as well, even on this 50 cc model in l e d headlights. So l e d headlights are good for a number of reasons. One, they’re very bright, the bulbs last a very, very, very, very long time. So you’re not looking to replace it or anything like that. But the color is something that people forget. That white color is something that’s closer to daylights. When you’re driving at night, your eyes are familiar with what you’re seeing. It’s not just that they’re lit up but they’re kind of tinted and your brain has to kind of figure out what it sees being this white color. Your eyes really adjust to understanding what you’re seeing right away at night and it gives you the feeling of being more confident at night because you can see what you’ve got. And again, that bright headlight, you’re not gonna overdrive the headlight on this, uh, because you can, you know, it’s got plenty of light to see where you need to go. Obviously there’s a high beam there as well, which works very well. Let’s take it around to the dash side and show you some of those features as well. Now because this is a 50 cc scooter, you have a speedometer that goes up to 80 kilometers an hour. Now this thing’s gonna sit 50 to 60 kilometers an hour for it’s driving. For most part you’re not gonna see 80 unless you find some way to go crazy downhill. But again, that’s the point. That’s why you don’t need a full license on some of these things. Now one thing the camera is doing is it’s correcting a little bit down here. This is actually a little bit more red, which from the driver’s seat really makes it kind of match the whole look overall down in there you’ve got your odometer, your triple odometer and so trip a, trip B and regular odometer as well as a fuel gauge and the clock all, everything you need, nothing you don’t. And again, you can see the real Vespa logo in there.
There’s some depth to everything here that just makes it look really, really cool. Lemme show you the controls on the left side. On the left side here. Really simple to control. First of all, the brake lever out here is a brake lever on a regular motorcycle. That would be a clutch lever, but the brakes are exactly like a bicycle. So very easy to get used to to adapt to headlight switch there, high beam and low beam signal switch, turn it on, turn it left, cancel it. And the horn is down here in that neck tie that we showed you earlier. That’s where the horn is, has a little grill there for the horn. So that’s kind of a cool spot to have it. But those are all the simple controls. The other side, you basically have a start switch and brings you through the menu.Let me show you down to the seat now though. So again, this is gonna be a little bit difficult to show but this bike has racing stripes throughout it and Vespa seats, they change with the type of style that they’ve gone for. So this one’s got the white uh, sort of uh, piping along the outside but it matches sort of a racing stripe type look in the feel here. A little bit harder to film but very cool and very interesting to see up front. So again, that theme, that attention to detail carried right through the whole vehicle. So following that, following that racing stripe down here again we’ve got that stripe on that neck tie. There’s your horn grill that we talked about earlier. And then you’ve got striping down here which adds the gold line here that off centers it a little bit, uh, different than necktie but just again extra attention to detail makes it stand out. And that gold ties it in with the wheels here. So the wheels are pretty cool on most vespas, they’re very automotive style. So you’ve got your disc brake on the opposite side here, we’ll show you that suspension in a second. But that allows you to really show off the wheel. And on this racing sixties model, you’ve got that gold wheel which again tied in through that gold stripe there again, attention to detail. It’s just visually interesting. It’s super cool and there’s a metallic kind of flake to this. So when the sunshine, you really have a kind of a bit of a sparkle to it that just makes it stand out again as something that’s visually interesting. Sporty, you know the racing stripes kind of match with this sort of racing style. Look, I should mention the tires as well. A lot of tread on these tires.
That’s something that you don’t always see on certain motorcycles. Uh, but these are really good all-weather tires. Let’s show you the suspension and brake side just for a second because it is unique on Vespas. So taking a look at the suspension on this, again, everything’s on this side here. So this general look is uh, here for a purpose. Basically this helps give you a bit of an anti-D dive suspension. So as you jam on the brakes, it’s not gonna really collapse on the uh, suspension like it can on something like a regular motorcycle or on a mountain bike or something like that with the fork tubes on both sides. So there’s purpose to this design here as well as giving it some strength. You’ve got your spring and shock in there, your disc break down there as well. And again, all the business and on this side, all the style on the other side. But I still think this is pretty good with style and they can change these uh, springs here as well. And you’ll see on the touring we won’t have a red one looks, I’m pretty sure I haven’t checked but I’m sure we won’t have a red one. It’ll probably be a black one there. So again, all that style kind of fits in and matches everything. I wanna show you a little bit closer view of this rail here. Again, traditionally on just about every Vespa, this is more of a chrome style rail. Seeing it in black here kind of gives it a whole different look than all the rest of the vespas. But again it fits in with the overall style, the scooter. So super cool the way they went black with that. And then of course this is super practical. Now I’m not gonna show you underneath the seat or in the glove box area in this scooter, we’re gonna start looking at the touring model and make some comparisons and we’ll open up everything in that one.
So this is the touring model and it’s based off the Primavera. Now if you don’t know the difference between Primavera and Sprint done other videos to compare it, but basically they’re the same basic architecture. There are some styling differences but this model forgetting the Vespa Primavera and the Vespa sprint differences obviously is a totally different look. And that’s what it’s cool about Vespa is you can have the same basic vehicle look completely different. It’s what happens when you evolve a vehicle over decades and decades. So over on this one, again those round mirrors are part of the primavera say with a round headlight, which we’ll show you in a second. This one’s got a windshield, we’ll get you a closer look on that. Gives you a little extra wind protection. Now on this 50 cc model, I don’t know that you need the windshield, but when you get up to the 150 cc model, which you can get in this same sort of style here, that will give you some wind protection and those 150 cc models can go up to around a hundred kilometers an hour. So that’s gonna give you that little bit extra wind protection as you get up to speed. That might be partly style here. And you can see we’ve still got storage on this one. Now this one isn’t lockable storage but it’s real leather, it smells like real leather, it feels nice and soft. And you have a storage area here with buckles in the back. We’ll show you that as well. Different style seat, a lot more of that chrome that we talked about a little bit more everywhere. That’s kind of what they do. So let’s just take you look, take you through a couple things that make this one unique as well. And then we’re gonna show you the storage which will be identical in both but we’ll show you on this vehicle. So starting up top here you can see those round mirrors. Again, they’re chrome here. The other ones were a different shape because of the sprint versus primavera, but they were also black. Then here’s the windshield again, this sticker again just for warning, you could peel it off when you own it, you still have an L e D headlight that functions the exact same way, but this one happens to be round. Instead of sort of making the neck tie the prominent piece like it was on the last model, you have this extra practical little rack here where you can strap things down, you can kind of pin it in place with various things. So you’ve got an extra way to carry stuff that’s within your view instead of something that’s behind you. And you can kind of put anything you want on here. A lot of chrome detailing in of course the vehicle. But of course the chrome detailing in the rack here. And the primavera has this little extra nub on the top along with the horn grill here, all of which is chrome. So lighting is gonna be the same even though it’s a little different shape in the headlight. But the overall look of the front of this is completely different. It adds some practicality, it adds some style and sometimes people don’t even use these for carrying anything, they just use it for style. But they are super practical to carry your basics and again, keep them in sight while you’re driving. So super cool, look on the front. Let’s take a look on the back as well. All right, I’m gonna zoom in and zoom out for a second cuz I wanna show you here the Vespa logo sort of pressed into the back there. So you can see that Vespa logo. Again, attention to detail. The closer you get to these things, the more visually interesting they get. And that’s really what I love about these Vespas is they’re hard to show on camera but when you see them in person they’re really interesting. So again, you’ve got the traditional leather type clasps here that open it up just like this, just like you obviously would open like anything with this type of strap. Again, not the security from theft that the other one would have, but again, a true sort of leather, high quality feeling, uh, area here that can carry everything you need. So I’m gonna leave that open for a second, I’ll do that up later. I also wanna move around to the seat here. Let’s see if I can do it still in one take. You can sort of see that the seat here, it’s not showing perfectly on camera. It might look like it’s a little bit black on camera but it’s actually a brown leather and we’re gonna zoom into that as well right now as we just sort of go carefully here. There we go. A little bit of brown leather, but you can see the texture in there. Again, it’s very much looking black on camera, that’s the camera correcting for it. Uh, but it also is very visually interesting because unlike the sort of smooth that one with the racing stripe and the pin striping, this one has stitching and the stitching kind of compliments the rear uh carrier there as well. Uh, the rear bag there. So again, visually interesting everywhere you go that real textured leather feel on this, that just makes it look like a more luxury seat as opposed to a more sporty seat, which we had in the last one. Now let’s talk about storage inside. So both these vehicles are gonna be the same inside. All the 50 ccs have a little key hole right here. If you don’t see that keyhole on the left side of the vehicle, then you’ve probably got a one 50 cc version of these. And uh, they happen to have a little push button to open it just a little bit fancier as you move up the lineup. But this works perfectly well as you pop that open you can see you’ll have your owner’s manual in here, which we’re just gonna take out for a second. And this is where you can put sort of a three quarter face helmet. There are Vespa helmets that you can buy along with this vehicle if you wanted or you can get it a different style aftermarket. But again, a lot of storage in here compared to other scooters. It’s also where your fuel fill is when the seat’s down, this is locked. No one can touch your fuel fill, no one can touch your stuff in here. And what people use this area for a lot of time is you can put all your stuff while you’re traveling in here and then when you arrive at your destination you can take it out and lock your helmet in there.
Now there are other ways to lock helmets on here. There’s a little tab here and here if you have a helmet with a little D-ring, you can hang the helmet off the outside of the vehicle, lock the little D-ring, uh, in there and still use this for your storage. That’s lockable storage as well. And the lockable storage on this touring model matters because your leather bag is not lockable. So you’ve got options there, uh, again with a lot of space in here and what’s kind of cool, if you wanna have some fun, you can take a look at the little dinky engine underneath there by pulling this uh out, by being able to pull that out. It also makes it easier to clean for you. You can just uh, do that wherever you need to. So lots of storage there, but there’s one other storage compartment that both these bikes have that is super helpful as well. (14:11) So the next storage compartment is one you’re gonna use quite a bit. It just holds sort of your basics. You have to turn the button, the key here, press it in and that opens up. Now you’ve got a space down here, there’s a little cap in here and that is a U USB port. Hopefully you can see that there a little bit. Let’s see if you can take it. Look, yeah, you should be able to see that. Uh, we’ll try to show you a better picture if you can’t see it. But there is your USB port in there. So this is where you’re gonna put things like your phone, your sunglasses, the basics while you travel that you can kind of keep in there all the time. So that USB port is kind of nice because it really allows you to keep your phone charged, have it ready to go wherever you need it. And it’s something that people don’t really think about, uh, in scooters. And it’s the same size on both uh, these areas depending on type
Of scooter, sometimes they have more space on one side than the other, but these one 50 ccs that we’re showing you, same size right there. So really convenient space that you can use every day. So the point of this video is to show you some of the cool vespas that are out there because I think a lot of times people forget how customized you can get it right off the factory floor. Each of these is essentially the same thing but they’re completely different and appeal to different people. Of course both these are 50 cc, you can get the same body style in one 50 cc, which is gonna allow you to go on those country highways. Those kinds of speed. Both of these take two people, the bigger ones do as well if you wanted at a scooter that can really do anything go on full on regular highways as well. They have that here as well at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports in both Vespa and other brands as well. And the nice thing is if you get into these and you start liking them, there’s a whole bunch of things to like in the pi GIO lineup as well. So Vespa is kind of the premium, it’s kind of the luxury version of these scooters. But if you want sort of a little bit more economical version, uh, there’s also Pi Gio scooters. And if you’re anywhere near Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports, you gotta come and see them. It’s February right now, there’s a showroom full of’em. It’s about 20,000 square feet of showroom here and you can see all of these along with the Kawasaki line, pedago, e-bikes and a whole lot more all indoors. And these things are selling right now. I’m in the sold row right here. There’s 1, 2, 3, 4, there’s several sold vehicles just right within view right here that have been bought just this month. So people are buying these right now and they’ll be ready for you for spring. I just bought a motorcycle that’ll be ready for spring so you don’t have to wait for the season to start to come see them. And again, if you have questions, let me know in the comments and I’ll make more videos here as well. So thanks everybody for watching and I hope you enjoyed checking out these scooters with me.
Hi everybody , it’s Peter, and in this video I’m gonna review two electric scooters. This is the Vespa Electrica and the Piaggio one scooter. Now both of these are electric powered and I’ve done individual reviews of them in the past. You can check my channel to see them in depth, but in this video I’m gonna do more of a comparison. So if I don’t go over every single detail again, there are those other videos there and if you have questions about them, I’m here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports , and they gimme complete access to the entire Piaggio, Vespa, and Powersports and vehicle lineup. So if you have questions, I can come back to these on videos. So make sure you subscribe. I’ll answer your comments in the comment section and we’ll make more videos if you have questions. So before I start my review, let’s talk about the class that these scooters are in, because usually in scooters it’s sort of a CC class, which is cubic centimeters, which is the size of the engine, which is how much the piston travels and the size of the piston and all of that are things that these vehicles don’t have.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So this one is called the 70 kilometer an hour version. That’s literally what it’s called. So 70 kilometers an hour is approximately its top speed. That top speed is around 60 kilometers an hour. So that one is just a little bit slower, but there are tweaks in that. And again, there’s some variation in that as well. So both of these, that one especially is uh, comparable to a 50 cc scooter. This one would be comparable to just above a 50 cc scooter, but not quite the one 50 kind of that in-betweener kind of feel as far as the speed goes. There’s also some size differences between these two. So let’s make sure we show you what it looks like to sit on these and how big they are and how big they are for passengers before we get into some of the technical details where there are some differences as well.
So let’s take a look at the size of both of these. Now again, they’re on the center stands, so they are a little taller and that doesn’t matter because once I lowered off the center stand, it will lower. If you are average height, you can usually flat foot on both sides of these. But because they’re on the center stand, they’re up raised completely off the suspension. What I really wanna show you is the seating position here. So this one has a little bit of a tilted seat here. So there’s a natural space to put your rear end and you’ve got good protection here with your legs. It’s a little bit wider to my view here than on the PIJ one seating position. Quite comfortable. If you are very tall, you will still fit here very well. There’s a lot of room here for your knees and it’s a comfortable seating position.
Jumping over to the Piaggio one, again, it’s on the center stand. This does feel like a smaller vehicle now. It has a little bit smaller wheels. We’ll get to that in a second. So just for perspective wise, it is a little smaller. Again, no real, this is a level seat here. So you do have the ability to kind of sit back further if you’re a taller person into the passenger compartment, but of course that would take away some of that passenger space. But overall, little bit more compact feel to this. That one does feel a little bit more substantial. But again, pretty good decent width here. To protect your legs here, it feels a little bit lower here. There’s no headlight on this section. I don’t know if that plays a role in it, but again, handlebars feel a little bit closer as well. Both are gonna fit people of various sizes, but this one definitely does feel just a little bit more compact. Kind of a seven eighths kind of size, uh, difference. Just a little bit, uh, smaller than the other one. Taking a look at the Vespa electrica to start the seat, the rear seat is very well delineated here. You have this kind of that, uh, color match stitching through here that really shows you where that seat is. And again, there is a bit of a up sweep here to a level spot here. Definitely a larger passenger seat here. There’s no foot pegs that swing out like most vespas in this class. You do have a little foot spot right there, which works pretty well. If I sit across here, you’ll see, oops, turn it sideways there. Let’s just jump right to the very back. You’ll see the one difference with all vespas, if they don’t have the foot pegs that come out, your ankles are kind of angled a little bit out.
It does work. You’re not gonna take a passenger for a long, long time on either of these vehicles, but you will have a little bit more rear seat space on the Vespa than on the Piaggio. Let’s just show you that one now. So on the Piaggio, we did mention the little bit smaller seat here. Again, there’s no delineation here. So you’re kind of the, you know, driver has to move a little bit forward to give you a little bit of space because it would be a smaller section here. However, your foot pegs here do come out. So your rear passenger here, if I just jump on the backside here, you will see that my feet on the foot pegs my feet are a little bit more comfortable on the PI G one, but of course I will have less seat space. So each one wins in its own way for passengers.
At the end of the day, you’re probably not gonna take passengers very far or very long on these vehicles, but you could. So I’m gonna take a look at some of the styling differences that actually give you some practical differences with each of these bikes in a second. But before we go too far, I want to talk about charging each of these vehicles because there are pros and cons to each and it’ll depend on how you want to use it. So first of all, the vest, but we’re gonna show you in a second. It has a built-in battery. It doesn’t come out, which means you have to be near a plug to charge this. There are some pros and cons, which we’ll show you in a second. This one here, you can take the battery out, which means you can park this anywhere and charge the battery inside in your house, in your office, wherever you want. But there are some difficulties with that as well. So let’s take a look at how they charge and we’ll talk through some of the pros and some of the cons of each. So popping the seat on the Vespa Electrica, if you’re familiar with a Vespa, you will find this to be a very familiar looking space. There’s that full face type helmet here. Now you may not be able to fit a full face helmet, but certainly a three quarter face helmet there. Most vespas, you can lift this out and see the motor here. You’re looking at batteries. Let me see. Yep, you can see them there. All right, so put this back in. So that is your space to use. And again, you can see it’s kind of unimpeded. You’ve got a lot of cool things here. Looks like there’s a little uh, key chain holder or something like that with the Vespa electrica. We’re gonna leave that in there. Let’s see if you can see it. There we go. Kind of a cool little piece there comes with that, a little collector’s piece. So again, normal piece there. Now normally on a gasoline, uh, Vespa, this right here is going to be your fuel fill on here. It is not a fuel fill, it is simply where you put the plug so the plug comes out. And again, because it’s built in here, now this
Should be much easier to do. Oh, there we go. I just had the little edge caught there cause I let it fall in. We’re gonna edit this out. Wanna make it look easy? There we go. So what I should have done is drop this with that little spot in there, but there’s that little edge there that was causing me trouble. But you can see very long, very thick cord. You plug this in, it starts to charge, makes a little bit of a fan type noise. Very simple to do. Now you have to be within a certain range of a plug to be able to use this or you can use an extension cord, obviously use a heavy duty extension cord if you’re gonna do that. They probably don’t advise you to use extension cords, but you can see that works pretty well. So the pro of having that with you is just that. It’s always with you. If you stop somewhere, go to a friend’s house wherever you are, as long as you have a plug in reach, you can charge this unit, which is good. You also don’t have to give up any of your luggage space here for a charger or anything else. So the con being that if you’re not parked near a plug, there’s no way to charge this. So there’s your pro and con of here, but let’s take a look at the Piag one. So the Piag one gives you a similar opening to the Vespa. Now like a lot of PIs, this doesn’t lift out but the battery does because this has the battery in here. You do end up in a situation where you probably can’t fit the same type of helmet that you would fit in a Vespa. Now you probably could fit a helmet in here. They do talk about certain types of helmets that fit. There is a nice carve out in the top of the seat to give you some space. But again, you have that battery taking up some space. Now the pro is, you can sort of spin this and turn it a little bit and this lifts off. That disconnects the uh, vehicle from the battery but without having a charger built in. Let me just grab my charger over here. This is what you get from PI for your charger. This is rather large, it’s also rather heavy. So again, you have the ability to take your charger with you, but it would take up most of your luggage area. So you can take this out, plug it in anywhere. This is a little bit heavier. So again, where the Vespa has to be parked near a plug, this doesn’t have to be cuz you can take the battery out. The other thing is when you plug the charger in, you actually disconnect the vehicle itself. So there’s no real indicator to show you exactly the state of charge. Whereas you turn the key in the Vespa while it’s plugged in and you can see the state of charge. So just a little different way of doing things here by disconnecting the bike, the bike has no battery power without uh, when the charger’s plugged in. So again, each one has its pro, each one has its con. The ability to just take this out and take it with you is a pretty good idea, but it may be something that’s less convenient for some people. There are a couple technical differences between the Vespa Electrica and the PIJ one. And this is one of the keys. Literally that is the key difference. It has a physical key for the electrica. So if you put it in where all the vespas have their little key hole and turn it to the
Start position, you’ll see the screen come to life here. A different screen here than on the uh, Piaggio one. This one has a little bit more color, a lot of the same function. So you’ve got some power modes here. We’ll cycle through that. There’s power mode. There is uh, where are we here? Power mode reverse on both these vehicles and eco. Now eco limits your top speed. So while it will give you more range, it just simply won’t allow you to have more speed. I haven’t tried yet, but I’m not sure if just driving it in power at a slower speed will give you the same range as eco. But that is one thing to keep in mind. The eco mode here limits your top speed on both these vehicles and that is something to keep in mind for uh, extending your range will decrease your top speed. But there’s the Vespa electro, let’s show you the pi GIO one. So the Piaggio one does not have a key, it just has a switch here but it is activated. I mean it does have a key, I should be clear. It has a key and you can use those to act to access underneath the seat. But to activate the actual vehicle, you’re gonna hit a button here. Uh, I think you have to hit it twice here. Once that starts blinking down here, you can turn it to the on position. There we go. Turn it to the on position and the dash comes to light. Now again, digital display here. A little different digital display. The other one is more of a, I dunno if it’s a tft, I think it might be. But it’s more of a multicolor typical like a cell phone screen. Whereas this one is still multicolor but a different style screen. But all the same type of stuff in here as well. You’ve got your sport mode, which is the full speed mode. You’ve got the eco mode, which is again gives you more range by limiting your top speed. And there is a reverse gear on this. Now again, this one’s fairly light. The Vespa Electra Electrica is a heavier version of a Vespa. So it is um, not as light as some of the other vespas and I can use, I can see the use for the reverse gear on that. Probably wouldn’t need a reverse gear on this, but certainly nice to have as well. Moving on to the wheels, the front wheel on the Electrica is very similar to a regular Vespa. You’ve got that sort of one-sided swing arm. You’ve got the disc brake and the suspension on this side. And this side is open on the front. This is very typical of a Vespa. Now let’s check out the rear wheel cause it is different on the electric model than it is on any of the gasoline models. So if you’re familiar with Vespas, there’s the drive side, which is the other side and then there’s the exhaust side. Because this has no tailpipe, therefore no tailpipe emissions. You have a clean area here where you can display both the front and the rear rim here. So you’ve got rear rim visible, uh, which is again abnormal for a Vespa. The Piaggio also does some different things. Let’s take a look at its wheels. So most piag Gios have a second fork down here. Something like the Piaggio Liberty. It will have a fork down here, just like your mountain bike, just like most motorcycles. This one is sort of set up like the Vespa. It’s got the brake on the far side. It’s a disc brake on both these vehicles. It’s got the same style suspension and that allows you to show off the wheel. The biggest difference is this is a 10 inch wheel, so 10 inches across here versus a 12 inch on the Vespa. But you do have this clear. Now let’s at the back, because that’s also different on the PI one, there’s actually quite a bit going on here. Instead of having the drive side and nothing on this side, you still have a swing arm on both sides. So the wheels are attached with two swing arms, that’s what this piece is and a spring on each side. So that’s a little different. And then you have a brake on this side, whereas traditionally it would be on the drive side on some of these other scooters, including the other Piaggio scooters. But you have a disc brake on the rear, which is kind of nice to have. And then the double swing arm here as well. So little different look, little different uh, way. But it does the same thing. They’re both powered by electric rear wheel drive of course and that’s how they work. Zooming back out to take a look at the front of these vehicles, you have a couple features here as well. The Vespa does things very traditionally. You have three little L e D lights here and here. So three there, three there. These are kind of like your daytime running lights. They’re hard to see on camera but they’re quite easy to see in person. But those are just kind of extra lights to give you visibility. Your headlight is up here. Now when a headlight is up there, you can kind of turn it side to side. You can flash your high beam side to side. You can get people’s attention by having it up here. Very traditional. Look on the PI zero one, a little bit different style. You have your headlights and marker lights down here. So there’s an L e D strip out here and l e D strip out there that are your marker lights and your headlights are in between, which means turning the handlebar. Your headlights don’t turn with the vehicle. They just stay just like a car looking straight ahead. So a little different styling, a little different way of going about things. If you’re used to one over the other, sometimes if you’re used to having your handlebar uh headlight, you may find that this one doesn’t do the same thing. Both are gonna work very well as far as visibility. Visibility on the road in front of you. Just a different way of going about doing the same thing. So let’s talk about who these scooters are for. Well first of all, there is a price difference. The Vespa does cost significantly more than this one here. So there’s that. And if you wanna know UpToDate pricing, you can go to Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. It’ll be right on their website. I never list pricing on the videos just because sometimes that can change and I wanna make sure that you have accurate information. But this one does cost more. If you need a little bit more speed, the Vespa is your solution. If you have charging nearby, same thing. Now this one here, I should also mention the Vespa has storage, more storage here and a little glove box just like the regular gasoline Vespas. This one here is a little bit more unique. There’s not an exact vehicle that looks like this in the Piaggio lineup. It is absolutely unique. It does have a little bit less top speed, but we’ll be perfectly fine around town. The ability to take out that battery to charge it anywhere might be very useful for some. But like a lot of early electric vehicles, these won’t be for everybody. They don’t. Once you run outta range, they do take a little while to charge. I didn’t look up the exact specs on the PIJ one, but this one’s listed as about four hours to charge. So you’re gonna be in a situation where you can’t instantly refill the same way you can with a gasoline scooter. And again, gasoline scooters are very efficient as well. There is not the cost benefit yet for electric savings over gas savings because scooters are so efficient. So sometimes, same thing with electric cars. Sometimes they’ll try to justify, well if I buy an electric car and I have you know this much driving, it’ll save me in gasoline alone. That may not happen yet. You’re buying these because you want to be tailpipe emissions free and you have that. Maybe you like the way electric vehicles drive, which I have an electric vehicle. I love the way it drives. And you do have that instant torque kind of feeling. This is a very peppy feeling. 70 kilometer an hour scooter. And same thing with this, it’s kind of a fun silent, quick, easy to get around vehicle. So they’re both a lot of fun, but they do have their differences over gasoline models and that’s really the benefit of Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. You can see this one, take it around here, you can see this one and take it around here and you can compare them both to the gasoline counterparts from both Pi, Gio and Vespa right here in stock. Now in January, you won’t be driving these. It’s a ton of snow outside right now, but the showroom here is still massive and you can come look at these in person for yourself. And that’s probably the best way to decide if either of these are best for you. So I wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports for giving me access to these vehicles and for allowing me to film them. And if you have questions, let me know when the comments below. And like I said, I did do individual videos of these outdoors earlier, uh, actually later last year. So you can take a look at them as well. And again, if you have questions, let me know. I’d be happy to answer. Thanks everybody for watching.
What to really look for in a first motorcycle! Or first bike in a while!
Hi everybody, it’s Peter and in this video we’re gonna talk about beginner bikes. And beginner bikes are kind of an interesting class of bikes because I don’t subscribe to the theory that every bike is a beginner bike and then you have to move on and you outgrow and we’ll talk about that. But what this video’s really gonna talk about is things I wish I knew and other riders kind of wish they knew when they were starting out. So whether you are starting out in motorcycling or whether you are returning to it, we’re gonna talk about some of the things to look for that I think some of the other videos don’t point out when they talk about beginner bikes. So I’m gonna move through three examples of bikes that you could consider as a beginner, but really these are just examples to have talking points.
So even if I’ve moved on to a bike that you’re not interested, you may wanna stay on this video as we talk about some various things that you may want to be aware of as you look for your beginner bike or your return to riding bike. Now I just wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports who gives me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup. And that helps us make videos for you because if you have a question that I don’t get to in this video, feel free to let me know when the comments below because I want to continue to answer those questions, create a little bit of a conversation and subscribe to the channel because I’ll continue to make more videos based on your comments and we’ll try to build a little community here of answers that we can help out everybody as a community.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
let’s get going with the review. So the first thing I want to get outta the way is there’s going to be a term thrown around with new riders that say you don’t want to outgrow a bike or buy a bike that you’re just gonna outgrow. And it’s a term I don’t use, it’s a term that was created by people wanting to sell more bikes. The idea is start on a small bike and in two years we’ll sell you the next bike. It’s not accurate in 2023 and the bikes I’m gonna show you today are bikes that experience riders would be perfectly happy keeping. There are several reasons to move on from your beginner bike, but we’re not gonna talk about outgrowing a bike because it’s just a term that doesn’t exist. This bike is plenty, plenty capable as are there other ones in here and they are bikes that you could absolutely enjoy for a long, long period of time.
What you will find though, is a beginner bike is a great bike to discover the type of motorcycling that you want to do and you wanna get something that’s versatile enough to kind of fit what you want and then you can decide if you want to keep that bike or if you wanna move on to another bike. Or in a lot of cases what people like to do is keep their first bike and get a second bike. Now that’s not feasible for anyone, uh, for everyone, but it is something worth considering. So the ones I’m gonna show you today are bikes that I genuinely believe you will not outgrow. And really I don’t like that term at all. There are some bikes that are underpowered and you may wanna bike with more power. These ones here are all bikes that I think you could be happy with for a long, long time. So let’s start with the Z400. We’re also gonna look at the KLX 300 and the Vespa 300 is in here. And again, even if you’re not interested in a scooter, stay on through the videos. We get to that because there’s some things that I’ll point out that you may not have thought about with your beginner bike that may be worth considering. And it’s just easier to point out on a Vespa. So I film in Canada, I’m gonna refer to this as the Z400. It may be the Z400 in your area and that’s cool. It is what it is.
This and the Ninja 400, which are based on basically the exact same architecture, are the two bikes that I recommend as beginner bikes most often. Now again, beginner bikes can kind of vary. It depends on what you want, but the nice thing with this is these are twin cylinder 400 cc and in the Kawasaki world these are very high powered for compared to the class. So there are several bikes that are, you know, for instance from Honda and other manufacturers that are 500 cc and they actually don’t make the power that this one makes. So the biggest thing with this bike is it kind of has a good mix of everything you could want in motorcycling. Now if you plan on doing a real mix of on and off road, this isn’t the bike for you, but for everything else, everything on road, this is a really good beginner bike. So you’ve got a couple things going for you. The twin engine we talked about, it’s very powerful, um, but it’s very controllable so it’s not gonna overwhelm you, but it is a good bike. Again, that’s gonna give you enough power. And sometimes moving to a bigger bike, you’re adding a lot of weight and you don’t actually gain any more speed. And that’s one thing that people forget to point out. You know, they talk about engine size but they don’t talk about weight. And this is a fairly light bike at 364 pounds or so. Uh, that’s pretty light. It also has a fairly low seat height, low seat height. You know, there’s pros and cons to that. A lot of people will talk about a low seed height for a beginner because it gives you some more confidence and I kind of agree with that. So I’m about six feet tall, I think I have a 32 inch or so in seam and you can see, I can easily sit on this.
I know people you know, much, much shorter than me that sit on this and are very comfortable. And the nice thing with this and the Ninja 400 is a lot of sportier bikes put you way leaned over in an uncomfortable position. And the first thing you want to keep in mind when you’re a beginner is you want to have something that is comfortable to ride so that you can get used to things. The other thing is when you’re wailing over like this, it’s a little harder to get used to looking around you. You have to be a little bit more aware. There’s some skills there when you’re sitting upright, it’s kind of just like standing or sitting. It’s very easy to look around you. It’s very easy to be safe. The Z 400 has mirrors that are up here on the handlebar that’s gonna give you, with the mirrors closer, a little wider angle view than the Ninja 400, which puts ’em out on the faring. The reason the Ninja 400 has ’em out on the faring is cuz when you’re in your tuck position, like you would be on a race track or something like that, those mirrors are still in front of you. Whereas here, if you’re in a tuck position, they’re beside you and they’re no, you know, they’re not really that usable from that position. So this is good. We’re gonna zoom in a little closer here to some of the things I like on the dash that I think make an advantage, give you an advantage as beginner. And then we’re gonna move on to some of the other bikes as well. So taking a look at the Zed 400, one of the things you’ll like about a bike like this is it has what’s called handlebars instead of clip-ons. Now clip-ons are pieces that come up here and they don’t really have this bar going all the way through. They function the same from where your hands are. But a handlebar might be handy if you’re a newer rider just because you have things like uh, navigation system on your phone. You can clip things on the handlebars as far as an accessory a little easier than you can on other, uh, bikes with clip-ons. So the Ninja 400 would have the clip-ons and the handlebar is just kind of nice for that seating position is is very similar. Taking a look at the dash, let’s zoom in a little bit here. Simplicity is the key with a new rider, you don’t want something that’s overly complicated. You want to have the information you need and not be distracted by the things you don’t. So that’s one of the reasons I actually advocate for not putting your phone on the dash. When you very first start writing, keep that away.
But again, as you get used to things, that’s something where you can sort of grow into and have that there. But simplicity is very good. So you have a tachometer here which tells you how fast the engine’s going. Of course you can shift uh, based on that. You have a gear indicator in the center of the dash here, which I think is really important for a newer rider. Just gives you a general sense of where you’re in. A lot of us, uh, who have learned right before gear indicators were pretty common. Uh, you know, you were always told you gotta do it the old school way. You gotta know what gear you’re in just based on the revs. But that’s harder. It takes more thinking. Gear indicator is a really nice thing on a beginner bike and a speedometer and that’s it. You don’t want, I mean you’ve got a triple odometer in here, regular odometer, you’ve got a temperature gauge, you’ve got a fuel gauge. All those things are important. The clock of course is important, but you wanna make sure that uh, you have those kind of three things to me if you’re riding a manual transmission motorcycle, unlike the Vespa, which we’ll talk about in a second. So nice and clear, easy to read gauges, it should be simple to read and that’s really all you should be looking for is those basic things. So looking at the back end of the bike here, there’s a couple things I really like about the Zed 400, which is the same thing as the Ninja 400. It has a backseat here. If you’re a new rider, you really shouldn’t be taking people out too early. But you can use that backseat for things like luggage. And you can see down here, the foot peg folds away. You have a little hook right here and you have a little hook right here.
Having those hooks allows you to strap various luggage pieces onto this rear seat up top here. And that allows you to really do a lot of things that you wouldn’t think you’re gonna do as a beginner. A lot of time you think about, you know, just riding around town, going to see friends, going to you know, work and getting around that way. But as you get comfortable with a bike, you’re gonna want to go on longer tours and if you do that you’re gonna need to take things with you. Whether it’s just food, snacks, water, those kind of things or overnight clothes, something like that. You have the ability to strap things on here to the Z400, which gives you an ability to have this bike for longer than you mate have some of the other bikes. As far as safety features on an entry level bike, one thing that I think you should look for on a street going bike, a road going bike is abs and this bike has that. ABS is just nice because it allows you to do emergency braking without having to go back to your training and think you can just react sometimes. So if you were to jam on the front brake jam on the rear brake on this bike, it’s going to prevent the wheels from locking up, which will help you stay balanced and it can prevent an accident. So again, don’t rely on that as your emergency braking technique, but if something comes out in front of you and you do make the mistake of grabbing too much front brake, too much rear brake, having abs can really help you, uh, stay safe in that environment. So basically this gives you a really good road going package. The one reason that you won’t quote outgrow this bike is because it offers something that a larger bike will never give you. It offers a really lightweight handling package that’s very, very unique to drive. So if you think of like certain cars like a, like an indie racing car with not, not extra, no extra body work, really lightweight and corners really well. As you get into things that look like, you know, road going cars and those kind of things, they add all that body work and all that weight they handle differently. And this bike can really teach you how to ride, teach you how to sport ride as well. You can take it to the track, you can compete in various classes that are made for this type of bike and you can take it on the road and learn skills quicker. Now there are people say, Hey, I outgrew this bike in two months. They’ve said that in my comments section. They’re wrong. They don’t do that. I’ve seen people who are experienced rider who can absolutely crush faster bikes, more powerful, better bikes in in a lot of ways, uh, on this bike because the simplicity to this minimalism is the key with a beginner bike. You wanna be comfortable in the seat and you want to have something that can really help you learn but also gives you something unique. And again, when you move to a bigger bike, you’re gonna lose things on here that you’ll never get back and that’s why a lot of people like to ride these bikes even as experienced riders. Let’s move on to one other bike before we go onto to the scooter and top of some things that you can look for in that bike that aren’t in here. So next up we’re gonna look at the KLX 300. Now there are options within this lineup. There’s a two 30 as well a KX two 30 which is a little bit smaller. Engine has a little bit less power and the two 30 s also available in a shorter or lower to the ground height, which may make a difference.
The one drawback with a bike like this, this is a dual sport bike so it looks like a dirt bike but it’s also capable of going on the road. The drawback is this higher seat height. So that’s one thing you have to keep in mind is, is this going to work for you? Uh, if you’re a shorter rider it may be more difficult to to learn but this is a great bike that is about 62 pounds lighter than the very light Zen 400. So it’s a very easy bike to move around. It’s a very easy bike to handle. The wide bars give you a lot of control and when we talk about going on-road or off-road, even though these are dirt tires, most of the time if you’re a beginner, you’re not going to reach the limit of a Zed 400 or Ninja 400 in a cornering situation on the street. So for a lot of people this is perfectly sporty on the road but it really gives you the advantage of going off-road. And if you think about the adventure class of bike, which is a hugely growing uh, class of bike in the entire motorcycling segment, this is kind of like a mini adventure bike. Now strapping luggage onto this is gonna be a little tougher than a true adventure bike, but we can show you a few things in here and if you’re considering sort of a little bit more adventuring, a little bit more light off road, the versus X 300 is another bike you can consider. That’s one I have not reviewed yet. So the Z 400 Ninja 400, I have a number of reviews on the four or the versus 300 x I will be reviewing uh very soon as well. But in this class you gain a few things. n Vespa
A really wide handlebar gives you a really precise control. If you’re used to riding a dirt bike, you’re gonna be able to get on this right away and get used to it. Now as far as an engine goes, the ninja is a two cylinder bike with 400 cc. This is a single cylinder bike with 300 cc. So with single cylinder bike is gonna give you a lot of torque, a lot of that pushing, pulling power that kinda gets you up to speed. It feels really peppy at lower revs, uh, compared to the ninja which is good in the mid-range and up high, this one will run outta steam up high. So if you want to go a hundred fifty, a hundred sixty, a hundred seventy kilometers an hour somewhere like a racetrack or somewhere else, you’re not doing that here, which means you have a little bit more reserve speed on the highway on a Z400 Ninja 400 compared to this. But there is no road you can’t go on gravel road, dirt road, even a trail and you can go between those trails on a bike like this. So really a good advantage there. Again, jumping on it, I’m about six feet tall. Same thing getting as much taller. The suspension does compress so sometimes in the spec sheet it’ll show you a certain seat height. This one compresses much more than something like the Zed 400. So I’m not quite flat footing but I’m just about flat footing on a bike like this, which means that that seat height does compress from what it’s listed as in the spec sheet. Let’s take a quick look at the dash and then we’ll keep moving on. Alright, glancing of the dash here, I really quite like it. Something like the um, adventure bike, which is the klr from Kawasaki does not offer a tachometer. This one still has a tachometer. You can see it just a zip across the top there when I turn it on. But it does not have a gear position indicator, which is something I do like for a beginner bike. But again, many, many, many people learn to ride without a gear position indicator. So you can get used to that. It’s just a little bit of a knock against this one. But again, very, very versatile bike. Very, very lightweight. And the benefit of a bike like this as well is if you run into a situation where maybe you are in an off-road situation and you drop the bike, very easy to just pick this up and keep going without a whole lot of damage. Taking a look at the backseat area of this bike, this one has a toolkit area which is mostly empty. So you can certainly put your wallet, your phone, other things in there and that is connected to the bike.
It’s not going anywhere but you can see just underneath here these two little tabs there. Again, you can strap luggage here. This one has a higher up exhaust just for off-roading. That’s what they do. But you can still strap luggage in this general area. So you can still take your daily gear with you with these extra tie downs. And I think those tie downs are something that’s important to look for. Two final things I want to talk about with this bike are the fuel tank and abs. Let’s start with the fuel tank. Fuel tank on this is 7.7 liters. That’s a little bit small and the benefit to that is when you have a fuel tank on a motorcycle that is large and you fill it up, it does change the weight of the bike. Something like the versus six 50 that I used to drive had a 23 or something like that. Liter tank 21 liter tank I think it is. And when you add 21 liters up high on a bike, it changes the fuel from when the fuel’s empty to when the fuel’s full 7.7 liters up here. It’s gonna be consistent whether it’s empty or full, it’s not the end of the world but it does give you a little bit less range. Now again, it’s a single cylinder, it’s gonna give you very good fuel efficiencies so you still have pretty good range but the uh, the um, Zed 400 has about 14 liters. So it’s significantly larger fuel tank over there. So fuel tank a little smaller, it is what it is and that’s okay. Now a BS brakes are something that I did recommend, but if you’re gonna do get an off-road bike, there are many off-road situations where you actually don’t want a b s and this particular bike doesn’t have a b s. So depending on how you’re riding, you may not want a b s if you’re going off-road. So that’s something to keep in mind as well. So now let’s talk about the Vespa as a beginner bike. Now for some of you you may be tuned out, I don’t want a scooter and that’s totally fine, but just hear me out because there’s a lot of benefits to a bike like this which may be something you want to consider when you’re getting a motorcycle. So again, first of all with a Vespa, you’re not getting that motorcycle image. For some people that’s a huge plus. Couple other benefits with a something like a Vespa like this, this one has no manual transmission. It is literally just twist and go and there’s a lot of different vespas, a lot of different scooters, a lot of different uh, you know, ways to do a a vehicle like this.
But this one is the top of the line Vespa, it has 300 ccs and it is fully highway capable so that is something worth considering. And scooters are, there’s one key thing to beginners. If you are someone who wants to take a second passenger on a regular basis as a newer rider or on a smaller displacement bicycle motorcycle or something like that, this is going to be the best way to do that. Your rear seat on a scooter is very comfortable. This one happens to have an accessory um, case back here, which we’re gonna talk about in a second. But you can see that backrest there allows ’em to feel very, very secure. And on this 300 model you have foot pegs that jump nice and out from the uh bike. So they are better foot pegs, better seating position and you still have plenty of space as a driver. So if you see, if I sit across here as a driver in a very comfortable position, you have that entire seat, actually the bump goes up to here so I could come back to here. That entire seat there is wide, it’s cushy, it’s comfortable and you can fit that second person. And having that backrest in place is really something I recommend if you’re gonna take a passenger because as the bike leans left and right, this is going to guide your passenger more so than just the way you leave. Sometimes you might lean into a corner or out of a corner more, they’re gonna stay steady with the bike and that makes the bike easier to handle as long as they kind of stay flushed to that. So as a two person touring beginner bike scooters are really good. Now there’s a couple other little features I wanna show you right now which you may wanna consider for your motorcycles but you’ll have to do them in different ways than the scooter does it. So here’s a look at the seat. If you didn’t take a close look at the Z400 or the KX 300, you probably don’t have to do much imagining to figure out that this is much larger. But the other big benefit is right here. It’s very difficult to find storage on a bike and storage on a beginner bike basically does not exist. This fits two helmets in here and uh, it’ll easily fit all of your gear when you’re driving for a day and that’s something to consider. If you are someone who commutes to school, goes to work, goes into the grocery store and wants to use your motorcycle for a lot of running around, you may find that something like a Vespa is something that you are going to use far more often because of the convenience of this. Now if you want a motorcycle, there are limited motorcycles with different bags.
Some bikes come with bags like the versus uh uh, versus X 300 which we talked about, which I will review reviewing later. It has side bags as well. But you have this space in here and one of the nice things about this is because it does fit a helmet is you’re always gonna be wearing a helmet. You don’t have to take that helmet in with you and you’ve got a big space right here. It’s also very common to have a top case. Let’s talk about that top case for a second. I’ve never seen a top case like this on a Z400. I don’t think you can even get one for a klx, but something like this on a Vespa is very common. Makes a ton of sense. It gives you some weather resistance and again, lockable storage that’s very large. Again, full face helmet, no problem. Even a weekend’s worth of gear, clothing, that kind of thing. You could easily do trips on this bike and go through country roads, go through main highways and take a passenger and take everything you need with you, which is a really nice thing to have. If your main idea of motorcycling is taking those weekend trips or going out to uh, small towns and stopping by various shops and grabbing something to take back with you, this gives you the option along with that undersea storage. You could leave with just your undersea storage full of your day stuff and you could buy stuff along the way and take it home with you in this top case. And again, top cases work very well on scooters and give you a lot of flexibility If you are considering a scooter. The one big difference as well is of course the ability to step through.
Now if you have some mobility issues with throwing a leg over something that’s larger, this can be something that’s also worth considering. It is very comfortable and very square sitting like this. Now in a sportier riding environment, a lot of people like to sort of grab the tank of their motorcycle with their legs. This one is perfectly fine but you will notice there’s sort of a limit to the sporty feeling. You’ll still lean in turns, it’s still a whole lot of fun but it does feel a little different than a motorcycle. You also have great weather and wind protection, which again can be harder to find on entry level bike. Those narrow bikes that I showed you before, you will feel some wind on your legs, which here you can really kind of tuck in behind. You can even get a windshield here and protect your body from that blast of wind. And it kind of all fits together on a scooter. So again, windshields may be something you wanna look for. A big an air bike, you can add them to certain bikes, you can’t to other bikes, you could do it to something like this on a scooter. So all of those things are gonna be things that you want to keep in mind and really I don’t find any need for a windshield on most riding, but if you’re doing a lot of higher speed riding, it absolutely takes some wind blast away and it can be helpful as well. Before we move on from the scooter ride, I’ve gotta show you one really cool thing about Vespas and Vespas don’t have sort of the two fork tubes on here. So you get to see the wheel here, it’s pretty cool looking. It does have abs brakes on this model so you do have that for the street.
The wheels are smaller, that’s something you’re gonna have to keep in mind with uh, really heavily pothole area. But scooters are actually decent on little dirt roads as well. So uh, you could ride on that and you do have usually good tread here for all weather, which is something to keep in mind as well. So let’s do a quick recap. The Z400 is the bike that I most often recommend, especially for people who are planning on doing their motorcycling on the street. It gives you a really good variety. Now if you want a cruiser bike, you may wanna start on this and then move to a cruiser bike because this really teaches you about the maneuverability, the handling, just the seating position is more fun to learn that handling. You get a real good sense of feedback. But the Vulcan s is a bike I’ve also reviewed it is a 650 cc bike. . But this is going to teach you the most on road riding type stuff and you can really do it all. You wanna go for a long tour on this. You can strap some luggage on, you could do it, but again, single person bike. This one here, if you are looking to do any kind of off-roading at all, the KLX 300 is amazing. 300 gives you enough power to keep pace on the bigger highways. You can move to a two 30 if you want something a little bit less expensive, a little bit, uh, lighter as well. And if you need something’s a little shorter that two 30 s is an option. But the KLX 300 really gives you a mix and it really shines off roads. So if you plan on doing a lot of off-road riding and just wanna go with the roads in between, this is gonna be a really good option. Keep in mind it’s also the lightest bike here. If you want to take two people on a bike, that is a smaller displacement bike that’s not too expensive on insurance cuz that’s the other thing to keep in mind with the bigger displacement comes higher insurance rates, the Vespas are really good options and other scooters as well. They sell, uh, Liberty Scooters here, which are up to one 50 cc. They sell all sorts of Piaggio scooters and Vespa scooters here at Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals. And you can compare them even in the middle of the winter here. The final thing you wanna think about is if you are a new rider, I’m filming this in January and if you’re in anywhere where there are seasonal issues, like for instance it’s snowing outside and your motorcycle season is shorter, keep in mind that you probably want to get booked for your license soon. If you wait till May. Everybody else does the same thing and then it’s harder to book those things. So keep in mind arranging with your insurance company, arranging with your license, uh, uh, situation, that can be the complicated process. The motorcycle not always that hard. So there’s three options and I probably didn’t cover everything. If there’s things you want to know, let me know in the comments below and I’ll continue to make more videos on beginner bikes and other motorcycles. And if you wanna see these bikes in person, swing by Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports and they’ll help you select one that’s perfect for you.
Hi everybody, it’s Peter and in this video we are gonna do a complete in-depth review of the Vespa product Red. And we’re gonna also gonna compare it to a red Vespa. So to do that, we’re here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports and we wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports for giving us complete access to their entire vehicle line, including Vespa scooters. So if you have questions about the Vespa scooters that I don’t answer in this video and you wanna know more, let me know when the comments below and hit subscribe because I can answer you both in the comments and in future videos because Jim Gilberts is gonna allow me access to these anytime I need them to make sure I can help you. So let’s get going with this review. First of all, Vespa product Red, the product red aspect of this, I’m gonna leave a link in the description so you can look into that. It is a charity and there’s a whole bunch of ways you can des, you can learn more about that that I won’t describe in this video. But I do wanna go over some of the differences between the product red and a red Vespa. Now first of all, this is a Primavera and that is a sprint. They share an engine, they are very, very, very similar, but there are some differences just between Primavera and Sprint. And I did a complete video on this in the past. But the key differences are the Primavera has a round headlight that has a more hexagonal shaped or square type headlight. Uh, you have different shaped mirrors. These are round, those are a little bit more elongated. You have a different rail back here which will show you a little bit later, uh, more on that. And that is the basics of the differences between them.
From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy… this is a great review ether way…
Now you’ll still see the product Red has red wheels compared to black wheels and we’ll go over a few of the other differences as well. But let’s get going with a review on this model right now. So the key visual difference to the product red is obviously the seat. We mentioned those wheels as well. But we’re gonna talk about what it’s like to live with this scooter, what it is, what it’s not. And we’ll show you a couple other tweaks that are real subtle things that are different in the product red versus the regular red vehicle. So first of all, this is available as a 50 cc or a one 50. You can see I’m about six feet tall. It does sit high on the center stand, so it looks like I’m way off the ground. But once you get off the center stand and sags on the, you’ll see it’s much lower to the ground.
But even at six feet tall, there’s tons of room here for a full size adult and you can take a passenger whether it’s 50 cc or one 50 cc. So you have a lot of comfort on a vehicle like this and it’s a lot of fun, a lot of fun to drive around. The bright red makes it really visible. People talk to you about it, it’s pretty cool. So we’re gonna talk about some of the practicality as well cause there’s storage in here that you wouldn’t expect in a typical motorcycle, both in here and in here. And I wanna show you how much and how it works because it’s really practical. So the only product red label that you see is right here and it’s the only one that says Product Red on the front we’ll show you the different uh, label out the uh, the front cuz it’s a little bit different, just says red. But to get to the storage, we’re gonna turn this key one notch and press the key in and this pops out. Now this is a great little storage area for something like your cell phone or something like your wallet, your sunglasses, those kind of things. And what’s nice is if you do put your cell phone in here, you’ve got a
Little USB port right there. So that little piece pops up and you can plug a USB into there to keep your cell phone charged. So nice little storage area, the kind of thing you’re gonna use every day for just your basics. The next storage area is one that Vespa is famous for, but it’s a little different on this 50 cc than it would be on a one 50. So the 50 cc has a little keyhole right here. If you wanted a clean red seat here without that keyhole, that would be on the one 50 where it has a little button to pop it remotely. This one here has the key, so we’re gonna stick the key in, we’re gonna pop it like that. And you have all kinds of storage down here. Now what’s cool about that is you can see on the left side of your screen here, there’s a little bit of a carve out. It can fit usually a three quarter face helmet in there, depending on the helmet, sometimes a full face, but really just three quarter face, half face helmet, the type of helmet you would typically wear on a scooter. Now what’s cool as well, and one thing that people don’t point out is there’s a little tab right here and a little tab right there which you can sort of see a little bit easier. Uh, on the far side there. What that can do is hold the D ring that helps fasten your helmet and you can hang your helmet on the outside here, which means you still can save this space as a lockable storage area for something when you’re going into a store. So you can lock your helmet on there through the D ring. You can lock your gear in there both when you’re traveling and if you wanted to leave it in there when you’re not traveling.
Now another cool thing about this Vespa red is what comes inside. So let’s just show you some of that. This is the bag that usually contains the owner’s manual. Let’s just pull the camera out and show you what’s in this bag. So the first thing you have in the bag that’s unique to this product, red Vespa, is this little bag here. Now I’m gonna keep it in the bag here. I’ll show you a picture here of what that actually looks like when we take it outta here. I just wanna make sure that I keep this protected for the future owner of this vehicle. So we’ll set that aside as well. And then you get your typical stuff from piaz, which is just your warranty booklet like this that is again in every Vespa, but then you have a little bit of extra special stuff. The first thing you have is your owner’s manual and it is set apart for the Vespa red model.
Now it is the same owner’s manual inside, but it does have a special cover. What you do get that’s actually special is this right here, sort of a collector’s edition type thing. And when you get a Vespa, Vespas are special and the different style of one over another can make it really unique. So I don’t wanna break the binding or anything on this, but this is a very cool product red explanation book that also has a lot of cool pictures of your Vespa. So it’s just kind of a cool mix of what Vespa is along with the product red uh stuff. And again, that would be a real collector’s edition type thing that’s exclusive to this model. So something that kind of comes extra and pretty cool with this model is this jumping back to this trunk storage area. Something to be aware of is on the Vespas. You can actually lift this tray out and you can see the motor down below. So for servicing and everything like that, that’s super simple. The other thing is your fuel fill is right here and we talked about this bar right here on the
Sprint. It comes down here and connects to the bottom and comes down. Same thing comes up around here and connects down on the primavera. It comes all the way around, which gives you a little bit extra grab handle for your passenger. But this is helpful as well when you’re putting it on the center stand, which is what I have it on right now, which holds it straight upright with a two prong kickstand. Take a look at the speedometer on this vehicle. You can see it goes to 80 kilometers an hour. Now the vehicle’s not gonna top out at 80 kilometers an hour, maybe if you were going downhill or something like that. But this 50 cc around that 50 60 kilometer an hour mark is where you’re gonna be typically driving. So the 50 cc is really an in town vehicle. That one 50 cc can take you up to around a hundred kilometers an hour.
It has a speedometer that goes to 140 kilometers an hour and that’s gonna allow you to have a little bit more power for the country highways. Now if I turn it on, I feel like there was one missed opportunity. They didn’t change the back lighting from the traditional Primavera, which is blue here. You could have done a red back uh, lighting, which I think would’ve been cool, but I understand why they didn’t do it. But again, very clear, easy to read information there. There’s trip A, I think trip B as well. Let’s just cycle through here. Trip A, trip B and your total kilometers down here and that’s about it in the dash with a fuel gauge as well and a clock. So nice and simple stuff. If we turn the signals on, which we’ll show you in a second, you have a single signal light, uh, button right there.
We turn your high beams on, you have the high beam light right there. We’ll talk about the headlight in a second as we get around. We’re also gonna speak about the brakes and I wanna show you a couple things in the controls. Alright, left side controls on a motorcycle. This is traditionally your clutch lever, but on a scooter it’s your brake. So it’s a lot like a bicycle. This is your rear brake whereas the other side is your front brake. You have a horn down here, you have signal lights there. So we turn on the signal like that, we cancel the signal like that. And then you have your high beam and low beam right there. Nice uh, good switch gear on the chrome and again brake lever instead of clutch lever. We’ll show you the other side and talk about driving this vehicle. Driving a 50 cc scooter is a lot like driving an e-bike. It’s very, very simple. So again, braking is just like a bicycle. This is your front brake over here. This is a motorcycle kill switch so that can turn it off instead of just uh, using the key to turn it off. You can just kill it right there from your thumb. It’s actually a requirement by motorcycles to have this over here. That mode button there is what I used to cycle between your trip A, your trip B and your odometer. And this is how you start it. That’s your start button right there. Cool thing about driving it is it’s twist and go. There is no gear shift, no changing. So it’s an automatic transmission CVT transmission to be specific. And uh, like I said, just twist and go easy, easy to drive. Take a look at the front of the scooter here. We’ll show you a few more pictures of the front here, but here is your Vespa red again, doesn’t say product red like it does on the other side. Uh, just Vespa red up front. Now let’s show you the headlights here. To turn the headlight on, you have to turn the vehicle to the on position and you can see that bright white l e d headlight and it is just the top half. Now it’s not shining at the camera, which is why it doesn’t look super, super bright. But you can see here when I go into the high beam as well, right there, it shows you that the lower high beam there is Linda. So having the very, very bright, uh, l e d headlight gives
You just very good clean light to see. It’s much, much better than a traditional older Vespa. And of course the white light, the one of the big benefits of a white light is not just in its brightness, but the color is closer to daylight, which means that your eyes are gonna recognize what you’re seeing at night a little quicker. Now I’m gonna try to pan down what we hope, uh, without cutting here just to see if we can do that nice and cleanly. So excuse my poor camera work as we pan down here, these are very difficult to film, but both sides here have uh, three little l e d lights right there. And you can sort of see them shining on my hands maybe a little bit. Uh, they are harder to film than they are in real life. They’re actually quite bright. Those are sort of like your daytime running lights down here behind the chrome. That’s your uh, horn grill. So your horn sitting behind there. And let’s go down one more time. On the Primavera you have this little extra silver styling piece that you don’t have on the sprint. So another just way to identify the Primavera versus the sprint. Now I wanna show you these wheels, but I also wanna show you the breaking system on them because there’s something that’s pretty cool down there as well. One of the really cool things about Vespas is they don’t have the dual fork. In other words, a bar down here and a bar on the other side like a traditional motorcycle or like a lot of other scooters. And that allows you to have this automotive style wheel showing through here we’ll show you the other side because that’s important to show you as well. But on this product red you really allows you to show off those red wheels here, which again are unique to this product.
Taking a look at the other side of the exact same wheel, this is how your suspension system works. Now this piece is a bit of an anti-D dive technology. So if you’ve ever jammed the brakes on on a mountain bike or a motorcycle with like soft suspension that really dives, this will help prevent some of that. You have a disc brake in the back, a vented disc brake just like a vehicle. Actually it’s a lot like a motorcycle that those drilled holes, they help dissipate heat. This one does not have abs at 50 cc. You can get front abs on or it’s come standard on the one 50 cc. So, uh, for the speed you’re going, not a huge concern to someone like me, I don’t think would be a huge concern. Uh, but what’s interesting here is being product red on the normal primavera.
The red one we just showed you or the normal, uh, sorry, the the normal sprint that was red this spring was red on the other scooter that we showed you at the beginning of the video. And they could have made it red here, but they chose to go black. So just an interesting styling detail that is certainly a standard part in red and they went black with it here on the product. Red taking a seat on the Vespa. A couple things I’d like to show you again when there’s that headlight there and that high beam there, again, not directly aimed at the camera, but they look pretty cool. They give good visibility. Now a lot of time when you see a new vehicle in pre-production form, the designers don’t like to show mirrors because they feel like mirrors take away from the lines of the vehicle. But what’s cool about the Vespa is the mirrors are also that retro design and retro designs. They didn’t worry about style, although they did with the Vespa, they worried about practicality. So both these mirrors, you can see they’re well clear of my shoulders. A lot of motorcycle mirrors are kind of enclo, they’re hard to clear your shoulders. So when I’m driving here, I don’t see my arms at all. They see directly behind me, which contributes to
Safety as well. And both mirrors are actually objects and mirror are closer than they appear. They are the wide angle mirrors that are traditionally only on the right side of your car. They’re both slightly wide angle and because they’re up and close to your face, the closer a mirror is to you, the wider angle it’s going to give of the traffic behind you. So these are very safe mirrors. You have great visibility ahead, around and behind on these Vespa scooters. So is this right for you? Well, one of the things I love about this product, red is obviously they have that charity aspect to it where you support that. But in a, in addition to that, you get some of those custom pieces, the custom wheels, the custom things that really make it stand out from a regular Vespa. You get that extra little booklet in here, which is a really collector’s item type piece.
And a Vespa should stand out, it shouldn’t blend into the background. So having this really cool red seat, everything about this stands out. The bright red color, the bright chrome, it looks really cool. But the benefit of this 50 cc is it can be right for a lot of people here in New Brunswick. You can drive this on a regular vehicle license if you’re 14 years old instead of 16, you can actually do a test and drive this at 14 years old. So you have something that can be practical, it can add a vehicle to your life that’s fun, that’s efficient and it looks super cool. If you’ve ever wanted to own an iconic vehicle and the Porsche 911 isn’t available to your price range, this is something that can fit that. They’re a lot of fun and they’re really cool. If you want to see Vespas in person, we have the entire product line here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. And even though I’m filming this in January, the showroom is absolutely full. I think there’s like 20,000 square feet of showroom inside that has all kinds of Vespas and other vehicles as well. You can see the entire product line. So if you want to come see it, make sure you swing by Jim Gilbert’s powerSports. And if you have other questions, make sure you let me know in the comments below because I’ll answer those comments in the comments section and in future videos. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hi everybody, it’s Peter and I’m here filming at Jim Gilbert’s Gilbert’s Power Sports, and it is December and I’ve been filming stuff here since August. And I’m gonna do something every single year that we might as well just start this year. We’re gonna do the best of, and what this is going to be is the best of things I’ve reviewed this year, and I’m gonna separate it by playlists. So I have a playlist with Vespa and Piaggio scooters, and this is going to be my pick for the top Vespa Piaggio scooter that I’ve reviewed this year. And we’re gonna continue to do this with the Kawasaki motorcycles, the Kawasaki off-road vehicles, and the Pedego e-bikes as well. So we can have all of those reviews all together. And you’re probably gonna tell me I’m wrong and that’s okay. So I don’t have a set group of objective things that make it my favorite.
I just choose it because I like it. And in this video I’m gonna tell you what I like about each of these three. These are the top three finalists, Stan, I’m gonna pull in a fourth in a second, which is kind of a runner up that I want to at least mention. But we’re gonna go through some of the features that I think is great about these and I will choose my winner. And when I’m done, let me know in the comments which one you would’ve chose in all the videos that I’ve done so far. And if there’s a vehicle that you didn’t see that maybe I didn’t do a review of, let me know what you wanna see and I’ll get that review up as well. So let’s go through with at least my top three. But first, let’s throw that runner up in for just one second.
From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy… this is a great review ether way…
Alright, you’re already seeing some indecision here. I’ve got my top three behind me, but the honorable mention is the Piaggio 1, and frankly the Vespa Electrica because these are two electric scooters. And I’ll show you the Electrica, picture just up on your screen right now. These are two vehicles that really intrigue me because I think the electric vehicle’s space really suits the scooter market. But for me, and we can talk about another video, these two were not the top three scooters that I saw this year. It could be close in 2023, but let’s move on from this and talk about our top three. All right, so let’s do a quick rundown of my top three.
This is the Vespa GTS Super Tech. This is as good as it gets in scooter land. It is top of the line, everything, digital dash, lots of power.
And arguably it is the best scooter in the lineup of the three of them here. But best Scooter doesn’t always win because it has to be my favorite. So will this be my choice? Let’s talk about that in a second. Over here, the Vespa Primavera, this is a one 50 cc and frankly, so is the Liberty S beside it. For me to be a winning scooter has to be a one 50 cc or so, because of the type of driving that I like to do, I want it to be able to go on a little bit more roads than just the in-town road. So we tested the Vespa picnic, which frankly is kind of the, one of the best versions of a Vespa. Shows you that cool, uh, picnic basket on the back and it’s got the blanket in the front or the picnic, uh, blanket in the front, which is pretty cool. It kind of shows what Vespa is as far as character. But for me, that one wasn’t the winner in part because that was just a 50 cc model. These two 150 ccs, that’s what I would need. Uh, we also tested the Vespa, um, the Justin Bieber editions, which had both 50 and one 50 cc. I didn’t choose those. We can talk about that a little bit later. Let’s talk about the liberty over here really quickly before we dig into what I like about each one, the liberty, again, one 50 cc really impressed me as well. These are same engines, same uh, powertrain, but very different scooters. So let’s go one by one. I’ll tell you what I like about each and we’ll choose a winner. Alright, so why is this in my top three? Now I just want to be clear. There is a clear winner in this group, but there is no second place. Everything else is second place. So regardless of where I land things, this can’t be any worse Than’s second place, but it should be first place on most of your lists.
And frankly, it probably should be first place on mine, but it’s not. So let’s talk about what I love about it and why it did not win for me. This thing is absolutely amazing. It can go anywhere, it can do anything. It’s a two person small cc motorcycle that can do everything you want with no gears. It’s just twist and go. It’s as easy to drive as any other Vespa, but again, highway capable. You also have in the Super tech here the digital dash, which has the ability to connect up to your cell phone and give all kinds of information there. It’s got lots of storage space under the seat. It’s got lots of storage space in the front hatch. It’s got ability to take on extra racks with really nice backrests that make sure your cust your passenger is comfortable. It has a side stand, it has liquid cooling, it has more width and more space.
It’s really, really good. It’s the top scooter we have probably in the store. But the reason it doesn’t win for me is cuz it puts itself into motorcycle territory. And for me, I’m not sure if I would choose this as a motorcycle or some of the other motorcycles we have here. If you ask me what’s the best, best Vespa, best scooter in the store, this wins to me. This wins over the BV 400 or the Beverly, uh, from PIH as well. I love the style of this, I love the tech of this. I just, I, it’s one of those things emotionally I like it. It’s by far the best vest mother there is, but it didn’t win for me. Which brings us down to the 2 1 50 s. Let’s talk about them. This is the Piaggio Liberty s. Now I chose the S because I really like the black accents versus the chrome accents. It’s about a hundred dollars more than the regular Chrome accented one. I like the look and sometimes it’s just about choosing what you like. For me, the one 50 is key because of the types of places I wanna drive. I don’t need a full motorcycle, but I wanna be able to leave town head on those 80 kilo an hour roads and have some power to spare. And the one 50 s do that for me. The reason this one wins over something like the Vespa GTS is because now I said wins. We haven’t announced a winner yet, but the reason this one leads over the Vespa g Vespa GTS is because this one feels like a scooter. And to me that’s kind of the fun of it. It’s lightweight, it’s nimble, it’s very quiet, but it’s, it’s just one of those things where when you get on it, it feels like the typical sort of old fashioned scooter, but it has the modern touches.
I really like the larger wheel out front. I really like that the one 50 models have front wheel abs. It’s got a little bit smaller wheel out back, so 16 inch out front, 14 inch outback, but still bigger than the Vespa scooters. And that’s just a good thing. They handle a little better at speed with those larger wheels. You’ve got a flat floor, you’ve got good storage both under the seat and in the front. And this is sort of a modern vehicle, but it’s just fun and that’s part of what having a scooter should be. So really like the liberty still have the uh, Vespa Primavera to go. Let’s take a look at that. One last one is the Vespa Primavera. Now I chose the Vespa Primavera over the sprint for simple reasons. The Primavera or sort of the sprint has a little bit more of a squared off.
Uh, headlight has a little different shaped mirrors, which I kind of like both of those. Uh, the round headlight is sort of the traditional Vespa look, so I like that. The other reason is you can’t get this contrasting seat color in the, um, in the sprint right now, but you can in the Primavera. So whether it’s this with this blue or there’s a white and a nice tan brown as well, a little different, uh, brown than this. I kinda like that contrasting seat color. It’s kind of either or for me. But the thing with Vespa is they do some cool things. I really like that there’s no fork down here. They have that unique looking suspension down there. It gives it that unique look. And really the Vest book is about looks. It has the same powertrain as the liberties. So it, in order to win this competition, it has to outdo the price difference. And there is a price difference. The Vest book costs more. Now this one has the case on the back. That’s an option. You can do that on any of these scooters. So that doesn’t give it a pro or a con. It just happened to be near me here in the showroom. So I chose this one instead of a different model. But there’s something about a Vespa. The way it’s built, the frame is built into this body work. Uh, unlike the liberty which the frame is underneath. The liberty is more of a modern style, like a modern sport bike where the the body work is around the frame. But there’s something about this shape that just says Scooter, when you’re driving a Vespa, people talk to you about the Vespa, people want to converse with you. And it’s just one of those vehicles that’s a classic all time vehicle. And despite the cost difference, this would be my choice. So let’s talk about why really quickly. Again, it really comes down to the styling and the feel. The seating position is slightly different here than on the liberty and it fits me better. And that’s just, there’s no excuse. Just I like the way it fits me personally. I don’t like the way the rear foot pegs fit my passenger. They would fit better on the liberty because Liberty Ones come out further. And why would I choose this over the obviously and clearly better model of the Vespa gts? Well, again, this one has that lightweight feel in both the 50 cc and one 50 cc. You have the same body works, same length, same size, same type of wheels. It’s just a cool look that gives you a little bit more practicality with that extra few ccs. Now the 50 ccs again, here in New Brunswick, you actually have some licensing advantages where you don’t need a motorcycle license to drive this. And 14 year olds could drive the 50 cc. Again, if you move up to one 50 cc, you will need some sort of motorcycle license to drive this just about everywhere. But for me, the Vespa Primavera is the best scooter I’ve tested this year. Now tell me I’m wrong in the comments. Tell me why you would’ve chosen something else. A lot of you have written in on the scooter videos and told me, uh, that I’m wrong. And believe me, I sometimes think I’m wrong too. As I said, the Vespa GTS is absolutely a better Vespa than this. It just doesn’t fit what I like in a Vespa the same way. I like that lighter weight. The Beverly, the BV 400 Scooter is a great two-person motorcycle. It’s much bigger than a scooter. So for me, it didn’t fit into the winning category. But that is probably a better scooter for many of you as well. And like I said, a lot of the 50 cc options are great options as well. It had to be one 50 cc if I was to choose it. And again, the Vespa styling, the Vespa feel the way that everybody knows what this is. They don’t even call ’em scooters that’s known as a Vespa even to people who don’t know cars or and motorcycles and everything else. I think that was what makes this cool. So let me know I’m wrong. And just so you know, even though it’s December here, we have what feels like hundreds, but it’s probably just dozens and dozens of Piaggio and Vespa scooters sitting here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports It is a fantastic time to come. Just take a look. You don’t have to have a pressure sales team. This is known as Canada’s Huggable PowerSports dealer. Come take a look. Come sit on them, see what they’re about. Talk to a salesperson about them so you can learn a little bit more about them. See if they’re for you. It’s a great time to put a deposit and reserve one for the spring if you want. Or you can just have a look and see what they’re all about here in Fredericton New Brunswick. Now we’re gonna be making some future best of lists. I have the Kawasaki motorcycles, Kawasaki off-road vehicles, which is gonna be ATVs and side-by-sides. We also have Pedego ebike video coming up, so make sure you subscribe. And remember, I’m gonna continue to review these vehicles again and again and again. So if you have questions, let me know in the comment section the things that you want to know about these scooters or the things that you like about them. And I’ll make sure that I include that information in future videos so we can continue to build sort of a database of information here where people can find out everything they wanna know about these pretty awesome vehicles. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hi everybody, it’s Peter, and in this video I’m gonna compare some of the differences between the Liberty S 50 cc and the Liberty S 150 cc and they are very, very similar. So part of this video is gonna talk about what it’s like to live with these scooters. Now, I did a video recently on what it’s like to live with a Vespa. We’re gonna do the same type of video on these because there are some differences between the engine sizes, some differences in features and stuff that may make a difference to how you use them. So if you have questions, there’s no way I’ll answer every question that you could possibly have in this video. But if you do have questions, make sure you hit subscribe and let me know in the comments below what you want to know about these vehicles. And I’ll come back to you in the comments and in future videos to make sure I answer your questions.
And I can do that because here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, they give me complete access to the entire Piaggio, Vespa lineup. So I can come back to these again and again to make sure we answer your questions. Now let’s get into the review. So before I show you the specific differences between these two, let’s just talk generally about a 50 cc and a one 50 cc. Obviously three times the engine size, in some cases, uh, that doesn’t translate into three times the power, but in this one it’s uh, depending on the specs you look at, it could be almost three times the power. Really, that is a huge difference in how you’re gonna use these scooters. Now in some places, in some provinces you can get a scooter license on the 50 cc as young as 14 years old.
In other places, including here, you can drive a 50 cc with just a car license. However, if you wanna step up to a one 50, you generally need to wait till you’re 16 and you generally need to have some level of motorcycle license to be able to drive that. Now, one thing that’s interesting to me is the 150 CC Piaggio Liberty here is actually less expensive than the Vespa 50 cc and they share engines. So if you are sitting there and saying, well, I want to save some money, there’s an option to move to a one 50 cc, spend some money on the uh, licensing and actually have more practicality, even if you didn’t want to get that motorcycle license initially. So the one 50 cc is definitely gonna do more for you. But again, there are some advantages to the 50 cc in just simplicity of various things.
From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy… this is a great review ether way…
The other thing that we should talk about is fuel mileage. Both of these get exceptional mileage. Obviously the 50 cc gets better mileage. However, I wanna do a test and maybe I’ll do this next coming summer. We’re filming this in the winter, but I wanna do a mileage test because I think if you drove this thing around at 50 cc or at 50 cc speeds, you know in town speeds, you’re not gonna be a whole lot, um, worse off than you would be driving this one. This one because it can only go so fast. Uh, you know, it obviously has a limited top speed and therefore uses little fuel. This one can go faster and therefore uses more fuel. But I do think that if you drove this around at slower speeds, this one 50 cc engine isn’t gonna be maxed out and it might return fairly similar mileage when you’re going fairly similar speeds. So that’s just one thing to keep in mind.
The other thing we’re gonna talk about with these scooters is they have larger wheels. Now, in the past, I’ve probably neglected to mention this, this is a 16 inch wheel up front on something like a Vespa, it’s a 12 inch wheel. One thing to keep in mind is there is a 14 inch wheel in the back. So only the front wheel is very large. The rear wheel is slightly larger than a Vespa, but there are, they are different size wheels and on a Vespa they would be 12 and 12 for most of those. So just something to keep in mind, let’s take a look at the 50 cc and the one 50 and look at a couple differences that’ll help you point out the differences when you’re looking at them. And then we’re gonna talk into using these scooters and living with them. Alright, so the biggest difference between these is obviously that motor and drive train. I have the 50 cc sitting right here and the one 50 cc sitting right there in the background there. Couple things you’re gonna notice. First of all, if you see this piag GIO circular type thing, that is your 50 cc. If you see that more oval with a piag GIO in the black there on the uh, panel in there, that is the one 50. So you’ll notice a couple differences in suspension as well. This one has a lot of coils here that are really tight together. And then a longer spring, that one has a few little coils that are tight together. Longer spring they are variable rate springs and different weights allow different things. So the suspension is tuned for the weight of each uh, vehicle. But that’s pretty much the only difference other than the speedometer. There is a difference on mufflers on these. Uh, one has a, uh, chrome cover, which we’ll show you just in a second. I’m not sure if that’s a 2023 versus 2022 because that’s what we’re looking at here. This is a 2023, that’s a 2022. It might also be a 50 cc versus one 50 cc difference. Let’s just show you that right now. So taking a look at the opposite side here, we’ve got the 50 cc over here, the one 50 cc right there, different mufflers, different uh, shield on that muffler anyways as well. And that’s about it. Let’s look at the speedometer cuz that’s the other thing to keep in mind. And then we’ll talk about a safety difference between these two as well. So we’re looking at the Liberty 50 right now. I’m just gonna turn the key on and the biggest difference is just where the speedometer ends. This one goes to 80 kilometers an hour.
Now keep in mind just like your vehicle, just because the speedometer goes that high doesn’t mean the vehicle will go that speed. So this one’s gonna sit there in that 60 ish kilometer an hour range, uh, for a lot of people at the 50 cc. So it’s an in-town bike that can get you anywhere you need to go. Uh, as far as warning lights, you’ll notice there’s no warning lights on right here. Let’s jump across to the one 50 and you’re gonna see a key difference. So looking at the one 50, obviously that speedometer goes up to about 140 kilometers an hour. So checking the dash, you can sort of see which model this is. And again, this one’s not gonna go one 40, but in that a hundred kilometer an hour range is no problem. That does make it highway capable, highway legal in most places. But really what this does is open up the secondary highways to go just about anywhere. And there are very few places you can’t get to on those secondary highways, meaning that this bike can legitimately take you everywhere without having to take a whole lot of detour. So let’s just turn the key on for a second. We’ll
Talk, talk about one more little thing. You’ll see all those warning lights will turn off. Uh, actually that oil light’s gonna stay on for us. Let’s just turn the signals off. There we go. That, uh, oil light is staying on just because I haven’t started it. Now you’re gonna notice that abs light blinking in the left side. Now if you’re used to a car, any blinking light is usually a very bad thing. This is not a bad thing at all. When this scooter is stopped, it’s letting you know, hey, the abs is here but I’m not reading anything. As soon as you get rolling a few kilometers an hour, a few miles per hour, uh, that abs light will turn out. That actually tells you that the abs is working and it’s looking for that wheel sensor. Don’t know why they do this. It’s uh, sort of counterintuitive but it’s fine.
But this bike on the one 50 cc has front wheel abs. Now if you wonder why front wheel over rear wheel, it’s probably a cost cutting type thing. Uh, but simplicity’s sake for a bike that goes this kinds of speed, the front wheel is the one that’s gonna throw you down if it locks up. So that’s gonna keep that front wheel from locking up. Uh, your rear wheel technically can lock up, but usually you don’t end up going down when that happens. So abs is pretty rare in scooters and it does have that front wheel abs uh, which makes it safe. And again, if you want that, you’re only gonna get that on the one 50. Now the other thing to keep in mind is that 50 cc isn’t going the highway speed. So you’re, when you’re jamming on the brake at a 50 cc, you’re not, uh, you know, gonna come down from such a high speed.So having abs is, uh, important for a higher speed vehicle. And this one does have it. So that’s nice to have and then again, makes a difference in your safety. Take a look at the controls on this bike. You’ve got standard motorcycle fare over here. Your high or your headlights are always on. So if you want to turn your flash to pass, in other words, you’re like high beam, just blink it. Uh, you can tap that to blink it. If you wanna lock it on, you can do that as well. You’ve got your signal lights, which you’re gonna press left or right to signal. You’re gonna press it in to cancel the signal because they don’t have self cancelling signals on scooters. And uh, you also have the horn down here and then a little trunk release button which pops your seat. We’re gonna show you the trunk in a second. Lemme just show you the right side as well. And we’ll show you the controls over there. Over on the right side, this is not a button that is just a label telling you that it’s your front wheel abs and it is on the right side because that is your front brake. You can’t see it on the angle I’m filming, but my brake lever there is my front brake. You, there’s no foot brake on these, uh, motorcycles and scooters. They have a separate break for the, uh, front and rear, usually on a motorcycle. Your right side foot is your rear brake. On this one it is the handle on the left side. So there’s a hand brake just like a bicycle, uh, on the left side for your rear brake. You’ve got a kill switch down here, which just, uh, can turn the engine off, kill the power, you’ve gotta starter right there. So when you turn the key, instead of turning the key to start the car or start the scooter, you’re gonna use this uh, button here to press that in. That turns over, the engine starts it up, it’s very quiet. And then the mode button here just cycles between your odometer, your trip A and your trip B. So same controls on both bikes. You won’t see this labeled as front abs on the 50 cc models only on the one 50. So we’re gonna press the button on the handlebars here that releases the trunk. You may have heard a click there, maybe not because I’m micd up. The bike is not, it releases the trunk. I’m gonna turn the steering wheel completely straight so we can get full opening of that, uh, uh, seat there. And this is what you have under the seat storage. So right now we have a manual in here.
If you have a three quarter face helmet, you could easily fit that in there. If you have a full face helmet, you’re probably not going to. Now one thing that’s interesting between Vespa and Paggio, the Vespa and Paggio, uh, or sorry, the Vespa at one 50 cc and 50 cc actually has a little bit different tray in here. The 50 cc has a little bit more room. Even though these share power trains between ves and Paggio, it’s the same size bucket, whether it’s 50 cc or one 50 cc in the Piaz gio. So just something to keep in mind. Doesn’t really matter which one you buy. They have the same storage there. Now if you wanted a full face helmet, again, this bike is capable of around a hundred kilometers an hour or so. If you wanted to take a full face helmet, let me show you a little, uh, spot where you can take up to two full face helmets, secure them to the bike and not have to worry about them being in here. So again, lots of storage when you’re traveling, all your stuff is in here. If you have a three quarter face helmet or half face helmet, um, when you’re parked, you can put in here. But a full face helmet has a special spot. We’re gonna show you that right now. So just so you get your bearings of where we are, the uh, storage area that we were just looking at is in the back there. The fuel fill was in the front of that. It’s still there. There’s a little post right there and there’s a little post right there. If you have a helmet with D-rings, which most helmets come with, you can secure that d-ring over that little post and hang the helmet on the side of the seat on the front side. When you close this seat down, uh, that will lock that D ring on there. So you do have the ability, the ability to secure a full face helmet sitting on the outside. People can still see it and they could touch it if they want to, but it would be very difficult to steal because the D ring is hooked over there and it’s hanging on the side. So it, there is an option to take two full face helmets and not have to fill up your storage. So you could keep that locked for other things. And I should point out again, these seats are lockable and they stay locked when you’re away from the vehicles. So you got your storage secured and your helmets could stay on there as well. Another storage option that we don’t always talk about is sitting back here. You have these hand grips which are for the passenger to hold onto if they wanted to, but you can also strap things there and a little bit of a luggage area back here, which you can get accessories to hold a case which could hold a full face helmet as well.
There’s two other little luggage spaces I wanna show you. Let’s look at them right now. So these pi GIO scooters have a little bag hook right here. Now, in my opinion, this is better than the one on the Vespa. On the Vespa, it comes out of the front of the seat and it just has sort of a hook that comes up. This one has a piece that removes here. Let’s see if we can see it clearly on camera there. It’s at the top of your screen, so maybe we’ll just move a little bit closer here for you. But it has a little hook here that you can sort of pull away. And when you put a bag in there, it will secure it and it can sit there on a flat floor. The Vespas don’t have the flat floor and that’s because of the way the frame is designed in this compared to a Vespa, there are different frames and that allows you to secure something in here and put your legs in either side of it and then you can carry another backpack or something like that, but not have it on your backpack or not have it on your back.
You can also carry grocery bags, those kind of things have them secured between your legs, but hooked into here, just like that and in, and if you don’t want that there, it hides away. Now let’s take a look at the little, uh, glove compartment here, which we’re gonna turn the key. Actually not turn the key, it was already in the right spot. We’re gonna press it in. And there you go. Little glove compartment. So this is something you’re gonna use pretty much every day. You’re gonna put your wall in there, your phone and other kinds of things. You can get an accessory if you want to help charge your phone in here. So it can be both charged or it can be, um, just as it is comes without a charger and just a place to stut your phone. The nice thing about this is even on the one 50 and 50, it’s identical. You have this spot, same identical spot on both sides here, which makes it a little easier to store your stuff. So the other thing with the liberty is whether you get the 50 cc or the one 50 cc, you can take a passenger. It’s the same size seats and they’re very roomy seats, especially compared to something like a regular motorcycle. You’ve got plenty of space to take two people. Now the nice thing about the liberties is they have these fold out foot pegs compared to something like a Vespa. The Vespa foot pegs is kind of part of the floorboard and your heel sits inside, uh, against the body work. These sit you outside so you have plenty of room and a little bit more comfort for your passenger to have their foot peg there. Now of course, a one 50 cc will allow you to take that second passenger at speed both through town and around.
Uh, weight is a contributing factor factor when you drive these power to weight ratio matters. So the 50 cc, you’re not gonna be taking passengers everywhere and that’s another reason to consider the one 50. If you have to take passengers around, uh, even if you’re only going in town speeds, the one 50 cc gives you significantly more power to do that. Lighting is supposed to be the same between these vehicles and it’s difficult to film here. But there is some L e D lighting down here, which does a very good job of shining sideways as well. Now what’s interesting is this is set to on but not running and the headlight is off. This is a 2022 model. This one’s a 2023, this one’s the 50 cc. It is set to on and the exact same thing, but the headlight is on. I don’t know if that’s a difference between the one 50 cc and the, or sort of the 50 and the one 50. I have a feeling it’s a model year thing because I would think the one 50 would have it on as well, but I’m just guessing here. But lighting is the same on them front and rear signals and everything else. So same thing for safety. The other thing is the mirrors. Same thing as well. Both of them are wide angles. So they say objects and mirror closer, they appear. Usually you see that on the right side of your car. It’s both sides on the scooters here. So let’s talk about who these scooters are for. Well, first of all, I’m about six feet tall. This is on the center stand. The rear wheel is off the ground, but you can see I can easily reach here if you’re shorter, you don’t have to
Stand across. You can pull it off the center stand. It’ll drop down significantly. Whether you’re short or tall, you’re going to fit on these. I mean, people much taller than me easily fit on these short People are very comfortable as well. So the real difference between them comes down to how you wanna ride. And in often cases it depends on certain licensing requirements. Like we said, if you don’t want to get a motorcycle license, there are plenty of areas including here in New Brunswick where a 14 year old can ride this 50 cc where they can’t ride that. You also can ride this on a car license in some places like here in New Brunswick, whereas you need a motorcycle license or some version of a motorcycle license for that. However, given the cost of these compared to competitive scooters, and like I said, even compared to the Vespas, which share a powertrain with these, these are much less expensive. And that means that if you’re just purely looking at things from a cost perspective, some people can get into this vehicle for cheaper than the Vespa and you may even be able to fit some licensing costs into that. And this opens it up. So my advice is if you can spring for the one 50, you will get more value out of this bike because you can use it in more places, which is probably something that you’re gonna use to save gas over your other vehicle, or it’s gonna allow you to go more places and be, have some more freedom. This one is perfectly good to do everything you need to do around town. And like I said, the lack of licensing or certain types of licensing requirements does make it a very good option. And part of what’s fun about a 50 cc is trying to find out where you can go.
I used to own a small scooter myself and I could go everywhere. It just, I had to find a creative route to go there. So that’s kind of the differences between these two. If I didn’t cover some of the things that you wanna know, I’m gonna be making a whole bunch more videos, even on the exact same scooters if you want. So I wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals for giving me access to their vehicles. But let me know in the comments below what you want to know so I can come back to it because that’s what we do here. We’re trying to build a little community of getting answers that you need to these things. And again, if you wanna see these in person, even though it’s sitting here in December, right now, we have all kinds of Piaggio scooters, Vespa scooters and motorcycles, all kinds of things here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. Make sure you come here, check ’em out for yourself. If you don’t want any pressure from a salesperson, no problem. You can just come check ’em out. They’ll tell you what the things you need to know about them. It’s a great place here. It’s known as Canada’s huggable car dealer, Canada’s huggable Powersports dealer. They really take care of their customers. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hi everybody, it’s Peter. And in this video we’re gonna do a complete in-depth review of the Piaggio Liberty S and the Piaggio Liberty, just the classic version. Now these are the 50 CC scooters. We’ve already done the, I’ve already done a review on the one 50 cc, which I will definitely be getting back to. And if you have questions that I don’t answer in this video, make sure you subscribe and let me know in the comments below what you want to know because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports here in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and they allow me complete access to their entire vehicle and power sports lineup. So if you have questions, I get to bring these back on camera and make future videos to make sure that you get all the answers you need. So let’s get going with the review.
From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy… this is a great review ether way…
So before we get into the differences between these two, let’s just talk about why a 50 cc scooter. And I wanna start with saying that this is how I started into motorcycling when I was 16 years old because I had a picture you see on screen here, which was my Honda Elite 80 cc. Now it was a 1986 adcc. And trust me, these 50 ccs, they match that performance. And with these 50 ccs, you can’t go everywhere on every road, but part of the fun of owning them is to find out all the places you can go and it just makes it a fun way to get around. So there were so many places that I didn’t think I could get to on a small little scooter that you can. And it makes taking the scenic route all kinds of fun.
They’re great for in town and if you’re here in Fredericton New Brunswick, you don’t need a, no, you don’t need a motorcycle license to drive one. A simple car license will do. And if you’re 14 years old, where I am, and this is similar in other parts of the world, if you’re 14 here in New Brunswick, you can just ride a test. And these can also be vehicles that you can drive at 14. You don’t have to wait till you’re 16. So it’s a great way to get around and they have enough power to move you all through city streets and you know, even outside of town, depending on the route that you’re taking. So they’re absolutely a blast. They take you everywhere. They give you a sense of freedom and fun that almost nothing else does. And as far as maintenance costs, you don’t really have to think about that so much.
They’re just not that much. And fuel costs, uh, when I started I used to carry on a little film container with Loonies and Toonies to fill it up. Gas has gone up a little since then. But the point is, you just don’t think about fuel costs either. They are so, so, uh, such little fuel use. And then there’s the, also the benefit of environmental side of things. So all of your in-town driving is where your vehicle is the least efficient, where these are incredibly efficient and that makes these really practical as a vehicle that not just you could drive but lots of people can drive. So you can add a vehicle to your household and allow people to get around town very efficiently, very easily, without spending all kinds of money on a secondary full size vehicle. So like I said, in this video, we’re gonna go through a lot of the details in this thing.
It’s gonna be pretty in depth just to show you the differences between the two and the details of these uh, vehicles. And at the end we’re gonna talk about who they’re for. So let’s start digging into some of the details and the differences between the liberty and Liberty S it’s about a hundred dollars price difference between the two and it’s really just styling and it can depend on which type of styling you like on which one you might buy. So the liberty S is on my right here, the liberty is on my left, and most of the styling differences can be summed up with this shot where this one is chrome and metal. This one is essentially black or piano black or different types of black. So that’s really a difference. You can notice the different color wheels here and there. And again Chrome through the center where you have black through here, some piano, black trim around the edges where this one is piano black with chrome.
This one is piano black with the black as well. And basically where you see Chrome on the Liberty, it’s been replaced with black over here. Personally, I’m a fan of this, but if you like the classic style, you’ll save a hundred bucks over this and you’ve got your scooter. So before we go too far, let’s talk about the mechanicals of these scooters and let’s talk about the elephant in the room because a Vespa scooter wears a Pi Gio badge on the front and these are also Pi Gios. So what are the differences and why are these less expensive than a Vespa? Well, the Vespa like a Porsche nine 11 and a Jeep Wrangler is tied to a certain look. It has to kind of look the same way. These ones are allowed to innovate. Now the Vespa has a frame which is part of the body work.
It’s uh, that Vespa look is really part of that body that you see is the structure of the vehicle where these ones, they’re allowed to innovate and because they’re allowed to innovate, it saves you some money and it also gives you more things that might be of value to you. So the body of this is a lot like a modern sport bike. You have body panels on top of an inside frame, so you don’t really see the frame on this, you just see the body panels and that allows you to have some different styling benefits. And the styling benefits can give some ergonomic benefits as well, which we’ll talk about as we move through the vehicle. The other thing you have is 16 inch wheels here. Now Vespa needs to have smaller wheels and they have upsized over the years, but these ones are allowed to be essentially motorcycle wheels.
A typical sport bike right now is gonna have a 17 inch diameter rim. These have 16 inch diameters. So you have the benefit of a much larger tire. And as you can see in the motorcycling world, nobody uses scooter size tires anymore. There are some benefits to having a larger wheel area. Now one thing that is the same as the Vespa, again, these vehicles cost less, but you do share the drivetrain. So the 50 cc drivetrain out of these vehicles is exactly the same as the Vespa. So you’re getting pretty good value here in a different type, more modern style. And again, you can pick which one you like. So let’s dig into some of the specifics of this right now to see if it’s the right scooter for you. So let’s talk ergonomics or how it’s like to sit and use this thing, sit on this thing and use this thing. First of all, I’m about six feet tall. Scooters are often fairly tall. This is on its center stand which raises it up, but you can see I can sit on the seat flat feet. If you are
Shorter, don’t worry about it. You’re not gonna necessarily sit on this with the center stand up. If I pushed it forward, it would drop several inches and be lower. So shorter people tend to fit just fine on scooters, but also tall people do something about six feet tall. And what I like about this is Pi G spends a lot of time talking about the rider’s triangle and that’s anything to do with motor sports. That’s the triangle between your seat, your handlebars, your feet, everything in there sort of, there’s a triangle of space there and they talk about getting that just right. This is a different feeling scooter than a Vespa. The triangle is slightly different. So if you come here to Jim Gilberts PowerSports in Fredericton, you can sit on a Vespa, you can sit on a liberty side by side and sort of see that differences. It’s kind of hard to show you. To me this feels like it’s a little closer, but as you can see, there’s all kinds of space in here for a person of my size. And you know, it’s sort of a nice narrow tucked in kind of sporty feel to it. What I like about the Piaggio that’s better than the vest, but in my opinion is they have the foot pegs here that pop out. So I’ll show you them a little closer in a future clip, but I wanna show you what it looks like for me to sit on here. We’re gonna get rid of our Freddy uh, power sports frog over here. Come back in the shot. So when you have a passenger, and these can take passengers even as 50 ccs, they can sit back up here. And because you have foot pegs, you can keep your heels nice and tucked in.
Now I have size 11 feet and on a Vespa the floorboard runs in with the foot pegs and I find like my heels are just a little bit out, it’s a little bit less comfortable, but you could sit someone back here to do all your running around town with plenty of space for the rider out front. And I think that works really well. Again, the innovation that they allow here is kind of nice. Another little ergonomic detail is that the floorboard here is flat. Let’s put these back in so I don’t walk into them. Well the floorboards flat on a Vespa, it will pop up a little bit and again that’s part of that frame and body construction, they need some strength through there. But this flat area allows you to move your feet around a little bit more. And it also allows you to use this clip, which we’re gonna show you in a second, to hold a backpack and have a flat floor in there for a little bit more stability to whatever you’re putting in here.
So scooters are known for their luggage carrying cap capabilities compared to regular motorcycles. And we talked about this little clip here, which we’re gonna show you now. There’s also storage in here and storage under the seat, which we’ll show you in a second. But I grab my backpack here to show you sort of the benefits of this clip in here. I’ll walk around the back here. When you fold that clip out, you can take a backpack like mine, you can set it on the floorboards and then you can clip this in here and it’s gonna stay there. You can put your feet to the side. Now I would tie up some of those little straps to make sure they don’t fall down, but you can see this is just a perfect little place to hold what you need. And I’ll just jump on here as well.
Throw my feet on the sides and I’ve got good control of that backpack right where it is using just that clip. So that clip and the flat floorboard give you a lot of security to your luggage. Now let’s look at the look at the built-in, uh, storage compartments on this scooter as well. So the storage area you’re gonna use most often probably is right here. You’re gonna gonna turn the key one notch, you’re gonna press it in and this releases here. Now hopefully you can see a little bit there. Let’s just move the camera a little bit forward there to get in. This is a nice little storage container. You’ve got lots of s space in here. Uh, not all scooters have as much space as this. It doesn’t look like a ton, but it’s only meant to hold maybe your sunglasses, certainly your phone and your wallet. Some of the basic things that you’re gonna pop in there every single time. What’s nice about it is you have the option of getting the accessory, uh, 12 volt or USB charger. I’m not sure which one it is. I think it’s a USB charger. But the point is you can charge your phone in here so you can keep it charged while you’re going. Uh, what’s really fun, if you wanna spend a little bit more money, you can get a helmet communicator and actually hear GPS navigation through your helmet. And of course keep your phone charged. But if you’re just like me, you might just throw it in there on its own or you might get a, uh, cell phone or a um, uh, charger in there as well. So that is an option for you. And you’ve got storage here on both sides. Let’s take a look at under the seat now where you have more storage.
So to get into the storage underneath the seat, unlike the 50 cc vest, which has a keyhole there, this one you’re gonna grab into your little uh, storage compartment here and have a little release at the bottom there where you can lift the seat up and then you can close this. I’m just gonna get the key chain outta the way close it. So I have lots of space to show you everything in here. So we’ll flip that forward like that. Let’s move the camera a little bit forward and show you what you’ve got for storage. So underneath the seat on a 50 cc scooter, you could fit usually a three quarter size helmet. Now there’s quite a bit of space in here to me. I don’t think a full size helmet would fit just because the little bit of BULs right here, if that’s open, you can fit your, uh, pretty much full face helmet in there, but you have a lot of space. One little difference compared to the Vespa. This one has a screwed in uh, section here. So this does not lift out on a Vespa, that tray lifts right out. There are a little bit of drain or a single drain hole. There is a single drain hole in the bottom there, uh, to allow any moisture to work its way out if that happened. And your fuel fill is also locked underneath the seat here so nobody can mess with that as well. There’s a small toolkit up on the seat, uh, just where, just outta camera view, which you probably aren’t gonna need too much, but it is there if you need it. So good amount of storage here. Now the benefit of storage like that is when you’re riding you have access to all this storage. But a lot of people when they’re not riding anymore, they’ll put their helmet inside there.
Now if you want a full face helmet or if you want to keep whatever you have locked in your scooter when you’re going somewhere, there’s a little tab right there and there’s also one on the other side. I wanna show you that up close right now. So a lot of time that little tab goes unnoticed, but what that is useful for is if you have a D-ring style helmet, which is the way they would connect on the straps, you can flip your D-ring over that, shut down the seat and you can hold your helmet outside of the um, you know, still locked underneath the seat but outside of the scooter so you can hang it off the side of the scooter left and right side. So you could do two helmets that way and that would allow you to keep whatever you have inside the scooter inside and locked while also securing your helmet through the D loop there and having it hang on the side of the scooter there. So really kind of a smart little extra piece there. Now if you still need more storage, these passenger grab rails right here along with this mini rack on the back allow you to strap various things down with a bungee net or other types of things, uh, some ties or whatever you need. But you can also get a, what they call a top box, which is a box that mounts back here, which usually you can get big enough to fit a full face helmet or other things as well. And those will be lockable as well. So you have lockable storage here, lockable storage underneath and lockable storage in the front. Lots of options to carry everything you might need to carry. Let’s take a look at the front here and cover some of the features here that often get overlooked. First of all, a scooter in general is really great in poor weather because you’ve got this weather protection here.
So when you have not just a fender but this entire area here, which keeps you drier in wet conditions. So if you go to work and it’s nice and clear but you have to come home in the pouring rain, you have a a better weather protection because you can drive through the rain and your knees are protected, but also the spray off the tire and all that dirty stuff off the road is gonna stay away from you, unlike when you have your feet out on foot pegs where they can get soaking wet and very dirty on a motorcycle. But you still have motorcycle components here. So unlike a Vespa scooter which has a single side and the open wheel on the other side, this one has uh, tubes on both sides. So you’ve got suspension on both sides here, not just on one side, which is more traditionally motorcycle like to go along with these more traditionally motorcycle style and size tires. And then you’ve got in here a vented disc brake, which is just like an automotive style brake. A large disc here on the 50 cc. On the one 50 cc you can get abs brakes. That’s not available in Canada on the 50 ccs. So it’s just something to keep in mind. I don’t know that it matters that much cuz again, you’re not going all that fast on this. Uh, but plenty of stopping power here. Let’s take a look at the drive chain in the rear now. So on the rear of the scooter, scooters tend to be a little bit heavier for the size than motorcycles, but all of that weight is down low here. So you’ve got all of this kind of area which again gives you that huge storage space under the seat. But the weight is down here. You’ve got a single spring here. Now if you’re paying attention to the spring, this is what we call a variable rate spring. What that means is that there’s tight coils here and a wider coil there. And that means that the spring itself is designed to help you handle both large bumps and small bumps. So a really smart, uh, up-to-date design there. And this whole thing is a swing arm. If you are looking at the 50 cc, if you wanna know a little trick on how to tell which one’s which, this will say Piaggio and look like this with a 50 cc. And I’m gonna show you a picture on screen now of the different look of the one 50 ccs. So if you walk in the showroom, you can impress the salespeople by just glancing at this area here and you’ll be able to tell if it’s a 50 cc or a one 50 cc. There’s another way to show you, we’re gonna show you the dash next. So let’s go take a look at that. So the other way to tell the 50 cc from the one 50 cc is looking at the dash here, which we’ll bring to life for you right now. You’ve got nice blue uh,
Backlighting there. The 50 cc has a speedometer that goes to 80 kilometers an hour, 50 miles per hour. It’s gonna go to about one 40 or so. Again, the speedometer will go to one 40 on the one 50. So the one 50 is gonna still top out around a hundred kilometers an hour. This one’s gonna be that 50 60 kilometer an hour range in, uh, in town speeds only for this bike. Simple simple controls here. You’ve just got the, uh, odometer, I believe there’s a trip odometer as well in there if we cycle through. Yep, trip a, trip B and just your mileage in there as well. Fuel gauge, which is nice to have as well. Not everything used to have at fuel gauge, you step to figure that out on your own. Uh, but that’s also nice to have. So let’s look at the controls as well.
All right, looking at the left side of the the uh, scooter here you have controls and I realized I made a mistake. The release that I showed you in the glove compartment is also electrically available right here on the handle and that’s something I should have caught but I missed. So if you’re watching earlier, just tap that when the keys in and uh, we’ll shut that trunk again and that will release the trunk. But there’s also a good noisy horn beep, which is quite loud, especially inside here. You’ve got your signal lights here so you can uh, signal left, signal right and you can cancel by pressing it in the center and of course your headlights are always on. So you’re gonna go down like that for flash to pass. You can see the um, high beam light just coming on as I tap it and if you wanna leave your high beams on, you just tap it forward.
So we’ll ha take a look at that. The other thing here is there is a lever over here, but this has no gearing for you to worry about on a motorcycle. This would be a clutch in the scooter. It’s exactly like a bicycle that is your extra brake, your rear brake. So uh, handle brakes for both sides on the right side the angle and filming out hides the brake lever but it’s right there as well. So that’s your front brake. You’ve got the kill switch which basically turns the vehicle off and makes it unable to start. So you turn the key and press the start button here to start it and you can kill it with uh, that right there or you can turn it off with the key. The mode button over here is just what cycles through your, uh, odometer, which was the, again, regular odometer trip a trip B. Just wanna show you the lighting in the rear while we’re here. We’ll turn on one of the signals here so you can see signal light comes on there and brake light as well. So just kind of nice modern looking brake lights and signal lights. I like the look of ’em, they’re not l e d on this but again for the price point I don’t think you would expect it. Uh, but very, very uh, nice looking lighting that looks, uh, certainly above its class. Taking a look at the front lighting, I’m having trouble showing you these but this is an L E D sort of daytime running light, much like a modern car, very easy to see in person, just awkward to film for whatever reason today you do not have an L E D headlight. That’s just a standard headlight. Again, price point wise that makes total sense. You’re not gonna outdrive the headlight, you’re not gonna be going fast enough to worry about that. High beam, low beam right there. And we’ll turn the signals on. Same thing in the front there. So there’s sort of a review of the lighting as well. I just walked away from that shot and I realized that where that L E D is lit, that for me is an extremely bright light over to the side which helps with visibility. So I’m gonna try
To see, see if just turning the bike on and off shows that in the camera, but I can tell you right now that that is extremely well lit off to the side, which gives you great width, your visibility, whereas the headlight will shine forward to you. So um, that may be even more visible to the side than the front. So let’s talk about who these scooters are for and they’re really for a lot of people, the first thing you have to point out with these is you have to want one because you want to have fun. It seems silly, a little 50 cc compared to the motorcycle sizes and speeds that you can have. But scooters are an absolute blast to drive. They’re also a conversation piece and they’re a little bit rare here in North America. So they become something that’s just fun to talk about, fun to live with and absolutely fun to ride.
The other thing is Vespa sells itself very much as a fashion brand, but a lot of people forget that these PI liberties are also pretty fashionable. This bronze paint color has had a number of compliments just as I’m sitting here filming. It’s a matte finish here so it looks pretty cool in person. But who else are they for? If you are looking for something that is very efficient to do a lot of your daily errands and daily, daily running around, these are excellent options. If you’re 14 year old, it’d be helpful if they could drive themselves some places here in New Brunswick they can do that. If you don’t wanna have to get a motorcycle license but need an extra vehicle just for those odd times to get around town, these are excellent for that. Why Piaggio over something like a Vespa? Well, some people prefer the more modern look, some people prefer the more modern wheels and they are less expensive with the same powertrain.
These are really fun vehicles and a really good value. There are bicycles that cost more than these and this is gonna take you a lot further and in my opinion, it’s gonna be more fun than a lot of bicycles as well. So lots of people can benefit from something like this. The other thing is they are very compact. If you have a garage of any kind, they will tend, tend to fit in with your vehicle just like a regular bicycle will. And you can park them just about anywhere. It can save you on parking costs. A lot of people will allow these to park up near their shops and park because they’re fashionable, uh, but they’re outta the way. You can bring ’em up onto sidewalks sometimes and park them with bicycles. So a lot of options for who this might be for. But again, sometimes the fun is just in having something that is this fun to ride.
Like I said at the start of this video, I started off on a small CC scooter that was only in town capable and I used to spend afternoons just finding fun ways to get to places I used to go to without taking some of those major roads. The things you see in here, they’re very quiet as well. It’s just a lot of fun to ride these. So is there something I left out that you want to know more about? I probably should have pointed out that this has red stitching here and that has white stitching there. There’s lots still to talk about with these scooters. And if you have questions, let me know when the comments below and I will answer those comments and I will come back to them in future videos. I wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports for giving me complete access to this lineup. And thank you everybody for watching. Make sure you subscribe if you’re interested in more scooter content.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter, and today we’re going to take a look at the Vespa lineup from the perspective of what it’s like to actually own these vehicles. Because so many Vespa ads are just fashion shots of people who don’t look like me and probably don’t look like you, and you don’t really get a sense of what it’s like to be on these, what it’s like to live with it, what it’s like to take care of the maintenance, to ride, to understand, and how much fun they are. So we’re going to talk about that in this video. And in this video I’ve got three different Vespas just to give examples of what’s out there. This is a 50cc model. This is a 150cc, and this is a 300. Now, if you don’t know anything about ccs and engine sizes, doesn’t really matter. The smaller the number, the slower the top speeds.
From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy… this is a great review ether way…
:
So this one’s going to be great for in-town use. Around that 50, maybe up to 60 kilometers an hour, those types of roads, this one’s perfect for at 50cc. This one here, the 150cc, it’s going to brush up close to triple figures in kilometers per hour. So it’s going to be really close to around a hundred kilometers an hour just a hair lower. You’re not probably going to take this on the highways, but you can take it on certainly any country highway, those 80 kilometer an hour speed limits, 90 kilometer an hour speed limits you can handle with this. This one here, anywhere you want to go, even with two people, you can handle that. So it can handle full highway speeds, even with a second person, and it’s really like a motorcycle. So again, all are very similar, but each one, the larger the engine, the faster the speed.
:
So once you’ve decided how fast you want to go or how fast you need, then you could start looking at the scooters themselves. Now this 50cc and that 150 cc, they basically look identical. The one key difference is the speedometer difference, and sometimes they label how many ccs if it’s larger than 50ccs. So this one has a little label, says 150cc. But sitting on them is going to be exactly the same, and this is where people are kind of impressed. When I talk about owning these things, a lot of people think of scooters like motorcycles, but there’s really a lot of differences that make this a lot more fun, a lot less intimidating. The first thing you’re going to notice is where my feet are sitting. Now, first of all, I’m a six footer, so you can sort of see the size here. You can fit a second person on here, you can come back to over here, fit a second person. The 300cc’s going to be bigger, it’s going to fit a second person even better.
:
But as you look at my feet compared to something like a motorcycle, there’s some key differences. A motorcycle is a manual transmission in most cases, and that means that your left foot is going to have to be pulling up on a gear shift or pushing down on a gear shift, and you’re going to need probably proper footwear for that. And your right foot is usually your brake on a motorcycle. So on this, the brakes are up top here. They work just like a bicycle, very simple to pull, very easy to understand and your feet don’t have to do anything. Now, there’s certainly an argument to wear protective footwear on anything you’re riding, whether it’s a bicycle, a scooter, or a motorcycle. But the reality is a lot of us are just going to hop on here with running shoes or anything else, and you’re just going to flip your helmet on and take off. No leathers, no other stuff.
:
So it’s much less intimidating than a motorcycle, not just because of the style of motorcyclists, but you don’t need the same protective gear for the controls and the same type of thing because your feet are just along for the ride.
:
The other thing you’re going to notice compared to a bicycle on a nice cool day when you’re moving through the wind, you’ve got good wind protection here. So you can kind of tuck in and stay kind of warmer. Some of these can have be equipped with windshields if that’s what you want, but you have sort of a good commanding view of the road and a protected view, and that’s also important for poor weather. You don’t have that wheel shooting up things at you. It’s nice and clean. Even when you turn the wheel, there’s no way it can kind of get through that body work. So easy to drive is really important, and especially this 50cc model. If you’re used to riding a bicycle, you’re probably going to be very, very comfortable with this.
:
And one more thing I want to show you with this lighter weight model is it’s very, very lightweight and easy to maneuver around. You can sort of tilt it left and right. It’s not that heavy. And again, I moved all three of these without power just by pushing them through to get into this showroom. They’re very easy to move around your garage or your parking areas.
:
In addition to being really easy to ride, Vespa scooters are also very good for practicality. And this one has storage. Actually, they all have storage under the seat. You can access it in different ways. I took the key out of the ignition and I’m throwing it in the seat here and you can see I can lift that up. Now, some of them have buttons in there that you can lift that up, but this under seat storage is what’s made these so legendary, so practical. The engine is mounted really low and that gives you a great center of gravity, which makes it feel super light, and that opens up a huge area for a cargo area.
:
Now when I’m driving around town, I could put my lunch in there, I could put my laptop in there, so there’s a MacBook in there, no problem. You can put all kinds of things in there because there’s tons of space if, but when you’re stopped, you can take everything out of there and you can put your helmet in there. So very easy, lots of room. This is a half face helmet. You can have a three quarter helmet in there without any problem. You can see there’s plenty of room. These are large cargo areas, but that’s not the only cargo area on this bike.
:
So when you look around this side here, there’s a little tiny little clip right there. A lot of people will take a grocery bag, clip it in there, and then it’s between your knees as you’re riding, and you can sort of hold that in there. The GTS model, the 300 cc, has a little different hook out the front here. I can show you what that looks like right now.
:
And then there’s one more storage area that’s really practical because you’re not wearing your full leathers when you’re riding this kind of thing. You might be on shorts and a t-shirt. So we turn this one click and we push that through. If you’re wearing shorts and a t-shirt, you don’t want your expensive phone sitting in your pocket when you’re bouncing around town, you want to make sure that it’s in a secure area. And a lot of people are going to put their wallet, their phone, their insurance papers, all their kind of regular everyday stuff in this front storage.
:
If you need more storage, there’s also cargo boxes, and I’ll show you them right now. If I were going to get a Vespa, I would get one of these cargo boxes on the back. Now this is the largest model here, the 300cc, and it has the largest cargo box. It also has a really comfortable backrest. So again, for the faster version, when you accelerate your passenger’s not going anywhere, you’ve got this really comfortable backrest that matches the seat in the texture and everything else in the color. And you also see the paint matching on this compared to the scooter.
:
Over here we’ve got the 150. It’s a slightly smaller cargo box, but it’s the same basic idea, paint matching everything else. It has the backrest, or this one doesn’t have backrest, but you can get that too. Over here lots of storage. On this faster model, a lot of people like to wear a full face helmet just for the convenience, for the wind noise, everything else. And you can fit that full face helmet in here along with all kinds of gear. So it’s super, super simple and super practical.
:
In addition to the practicality of these, we should talk about the safety. Now Vespas are kind of cool because they’re unlike, they’re different than bicycles where you have a sort of a tube coming down here and a matching tube coming up the other side. The other side, you just see the wheel. We’ll show you that a little bit later in the video. But on this side you have this kind of weird looking suspension type piece here. And this is what we call a sort of anti-dive technology or anti-dive geometry. So when you hit the brakes, the suspension doesn’t just fully compress, it’s still able to kind of work. So it’s a very complicated and advanced system that makes it kind of nice.
:
Now you’ll see it says ABS and ASR. Some of these models are equipped with antilock brakes and anti-slip, essentially traction control type function. So the nice thing about this is you can see this little panel down here, that’s where your ABS sensor works. And if you were driving this in poor weather, you’ve got lots of tread here ,different than something like a sport bike that can handle poor weather, rainy conditions. You also, if you turn the wheel there, it’s not going to spray you. You can see that, but you’ve got the brakes and the traction control to make sure that it’s not going to run into problems, especially on these faster models.
:
So we talked about the ownership experience from a safety perspective and a practicality experience. And I’ve talked about how this is as easy to ride as a bicycle, but let’s talk about the one sort of elephant in the room. This is a motorized vehicle. What about maintenance? Well, for most Vespa buyers, again, there is a service schedule that you can follow. But for most Vespa buyers, it’s an oil change once a year. It’s a shop visit once a year, you’re not having to do anything for yourself. All of the powertrain down here is very small, very simple. And like I said, for most of you, it’s maybe once a season, once a year, oil changes on these types of things, especially here in Canada where we can’t ride them fully in the winter. So very simple to own.
:
Now, what I like about all of these models, whether it’s the one 50 here, the 50cc there, or the 300 here is they’re all extremely fuel efficient. And that’s where these drive really makes the biggest difference because your car is least efficient in town. These things are fantastic in town. This one here, that’s the only place it can run. So it allows you to get crazy efficiency in town where you really don’t even think about the fuel costs at all on any of them, and you can replace a lot of your regular driving.
:
So let’s talk about who these might be for. The Vespa scooter buyer is a diverse set of buyers, and it depends on what you want. A lot of people buy this because everyone in their house can drive it. The 50cc that we were talking about in New Brunswick here where we’re filming this 14 year olds can get their license to drive that. And again, it’s not really any more intimidating than a bicycle. This one here is a 150cc, so here you got to be 16 or older. But again, everyone can kind of use it.
:
So the biggest thing is how do you want to use it? If you want, if it were me, this one is probably the model I would choose for me because I live a little bit outside of town. This one can do all my country road driving and all my in-town driving. You can park it literally anywhere. And there’s some cost savings there as well. If you’re used to parking in a city area, a lot of these can park with bicycles or in no charge areas or certainly lower charge areas to make it more efficient to own from that parking perspective. They’re easy to move around, easy to park wherever you need to go.
:
The other thing these are really good for is, like I said, everybody in the house can drive one. So if you’re looking to pick up an extra vehicle, maybe you’ve got some young kids that are coming along, these vehicles work to get them where they’re going without you having to drive them. You can drive it yourself, you can leave a car. It’s an inexpensive way to add a vehicle to your household.
:
And then of course, they’re fun. The reason these have really worked is the fun factor. It doesn’t matter where you’re driving, you don’t need to be going fast to have fun on these, and these things are a blast.
:
The other thing with a Vespa scooter is they’re the kind of scooter that you can pass down from generation to generation. The styling is timeless, and that’s a big thing to point out with just styling in general. You can customize this sort of the way you want. You can add accessories, you can buy it right off the showroom floor with lots of fun colors, but the style has been around for a while. It’s not going to age or date out. And there’s a reason that Vespa buyers sometimes hand these down to kids. It’s the kind of thing you can buy for yourself, your kids can use, and even your grandkids will still be using because they’re very reliable. They last for a long time. They have that timeless style and everybody wants to have one and talk about it. They’re a conversation piece.
:
So who are they for? It really depends on what you want to do with it, but they’re really for a lot of people.So as I mentioned off the top, there’s no way that I answered every question that you have about these vehicles. There’s still a whole lot more to show and I’ll be making more videos on these anyways. But here’s the thing, if you have a question that you want to know more about any one of these Vespa scooters, make sure you let me know in the comments below and hit the subscribe button. Because in addition to videos that I’m going to make anyways, if you have a question or comment that’s easier for me to answer on video, I’ll make more videos.
:
And I can do that because I want to thank Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, who give me complete access to this Vespa line to do exactly that, to answer your questions, make more videos so you can see what these are all about. We’ll have riding videos in the future, all kinds of fun things coming up. So make sure you hit subscribe. And if you want to see these in person, even in the winter, there’s all kinds of these sitting around at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports Fredericton, Canada’s Huggable PowerSports Dealer , even in the winter, you can come check about in person for yourself. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter. It is a beautiful fall day. Check out those colors in the background and that is the perfect environment to enjoy this, the Piaggio BV 400. This is a two passenger motorcycle scooter as well. That is amazing to go from small town to small town on country roads with two people or to zip around town or even to go out on the highway.
So first of all, before we get into the full review that we’re going to do on this vehicle, we have to thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports here in Fredericton New Brunswick because they give me full access to the Piaggio lineup. And what that means for you is even if you’re not local, if you have questions about this, you can let me know in the comments section below and I can come back to this vehicle, make more videos to help answer your questions, because there’s no way that you’re the only one with the same questions that you have. So now let’s dig into the review.
From here you can watch Peters Video or Read What he says the choice is your enjoy… this is a great review ether way…
So let’s talk about what this is. It’s still a scooter, but it really blurs the lines between scooter and motorcycle. So the benefits of a scooter are a couple of things. First of all, there’s no manual transmission on this. You get on this, you can ride it exactly like a scooter. It’s just twist and go, no gear shift to worry about it is a full-sized scooter. And one of the things it does is it gives you some weather protection that you don’t get on the average motorcycle. And even frankly on the average scooter, you’ve got this taller windshield, we’ll talk about that in a second. And then this is a full two-passenger vehicle. It’s very difficult to get a small displacement motorcycle that very comfortably takes a second person. And this one does very well with this accessory cargo box, which we’re going to show you in a little bit with the color-matched back rests so that your passenger is extremely comfortable and feels very safe with that backrest behind them, and of course, this is easily removable. We’ll talk about that in a second.
Where I see this scooter really standing out in that small motorcycle class is the ability to take your second person. So again, you can use this around town, you can do that kind of thing. But if you need to get out on the country highways or even the larger highways, you can do that. And if you take a second person, you can sit there and do maybe a little afternoon tour, start maybe in the morning with a little coffee shop and then head to the next small town and check out their maybe antique market or some small trinkets. You can pack up some stuff underneath the seat in here, swing by in the later afternoon, get another coffee, stop for pizza somewhere. All those things. You could tour small towns easily on country roads because this is a great country road cruiser that’s also highway capable. So when you’ve gone out your way and you just got a zip home, you can do that.
This big windshield makes a big impression on me because a lot of the time to get a windshield like this, you’re dealing with a very large motorcycle. And that means that when you’re driving this at speed, not only do you have some temperature protection, because of course scooters do a good job of protecting your leg area from the wind, but you also have some protection from the elements, bugs and other things that can come and hit you. So you still get that wide open view that you get on a motorcycle, but you have the protection of a touring motorcycle here on what I would call a touring scooter, that again, is very in town capable. So let’s look at some of the details up close and we’ll keep going through.
So let’s start off with how to use this. This is your keyless entry for your Piaggio BV 400. Now to be very blunt, it’s probably the only thing that they get kind of wrong. If you have a keyless entry in a car, the benefit is you can keep this in your pocket. If you have it on this scooter, you have to hit this top button here, and then to be honest, I don’t remember if to hit it or hold it. So I’m going to hold it up against this section right here and once the little lights flash there, which is the, oops, there we go. Once the light’s flashed there, then you can turn the key.
So what I don’t like about that is you have to pull this out of your pocket and you’re still essentially turning a key, which is now just a switch instead of a key. It is what it is. It’s still kind of cool to have. It’s a different way of doing things, but it works and it works very well.
Let’s dig in a little closer and see what we’ve got once you turn it on. All right, now the engine’s not running yet. We will turn it on later. It is extremely quiet, but you’re going to see some of these lights blinking up there just because the engine is not on. So of course you got a clock over here. Total odometer, temperature gauge there. You do have a full tachometer, a digital speedometer, fuel gauge over here, 13 degree Celsius outside the ASR, which is your anti-slip, essentially your traction control. That light’s blinking right now and so is your ABS. And that’s because those, once you start moving those goals, so again, attraction control and an ABS brake system makes this very good.
Now you’ll notice your distance empty about 490 kilometers. Things capable of getting right around that 500 kilometer mark, which is a lot for a motorcycle. Now you can cycle through some of the things you see here by hitting this mode button there. 12.2 volts. You’ve got kilometers per liter up there, and again, that 490 kilometers to empty, you can cycle through hitting this button here. But there’s also, on your handlebar, you can move that mode button right there. So we’re going to show you that right now.
Right side handlebar, this is where the action happens. There is your throttle right there. This is a kill switch standard on just about every… I think every motorcycle. You have your four-way flashers up top here. A way to connect your phone, I believe I have to dig through the owner’s manual more on that. So again, if there’s more to learn there, which I’m sure there is, we’ll do a future video on that mode button that I was hitting on the dash. You can also hit it without taking your hand off of the handlebar, which is really smart. And there is your start switch over there.
Let’s check a look at, take a look at the other side, see some of the controls over there. All right, standard motorcycle controls here. You have your headlights there that goes from your high beam to your low beam, standard of course is going to be your low beam. You can flash over like flash to pass right here by just tapping that you have your standard signal switches here, the left side, right side, cancel them.
And we did mention over on the other side there was the four-way flasher. There’s your horn, quite loud horn, so very good there. Brakes of course right there on the scooters. This is not a clutch. This is your rear brake I guess it would be. I’m so used to motorcycles. So again, on a motorcycle, this would be your clutch. This is also your break here. And then you’ve got little things here. A lot of times these are weighted to help you with a anti-vibration. I’m not sure if they’re there, but they are certainly of the size that I would think that they could be. And again, very comfortable grips.
And we’ll take a look at mirrors. The mirrors are wide angle, Let’s just quickly look at them. All right, this handlebar still turns here but you can see objects in mirror are closer than they appear traditionally on a car you only have that on the right side, but here you have that on both sides. So they do give you a little bit extra wide angle, little bit extra visibility while you’re riding, which I think is really helpful.
So I’m going to show you the front of the motorcycle now. Now keep in mind I’m wearing a microphone up here. The engine noise is down there, so it’s going to be a little quieter to you. But the point is I’m not going to have to raise my voice. So to start it you got to tap one of the brake levers, hit the start button and it starts right up. I don’t know if you can hear it at all, but I don’t have to speak up, speak loudly. You’ll see some vibration because it’s sitting on the center stand. That center stand is hard-mounted to the frame, so don’t worry about that.
But the reason I started up is you can see the headlight here. You’ve got the daytime running lights down there. So very automotive LED style looks, LED style headlights there. We’ll turn on the four-way flashers. You can see there’re your LED-style signal lights as well. And then of, course if we turn those off, if we flash your high beam there, you can see that high beam flashes. So one of the benefits that you have over here is those LED lights give you a really automotive look and you also have that clean white light shining in front of you when that white light is there. That gives you a really clear closer-to-day light color. It helps your eyes identify what you see at night. So again, halogen light is a different yellowy color. The whiter light is closer to a daylight color, it just makes it easier to identify what you’re seeing even at night. And a really good headlight, I think, really matters when you’re going on longer rides.
Speaking of longer rides, you’ve got fantastic brakes. We talked about ABS brakes in here. That’s what this is here. This is sort of your sensor for your ABS or a piece of your sensor for your ABS. So when you see a motorcycle or a scooter with that, it’s got ABS brakes, vented discs here, that helps dissipate heat, which means you can handle high speed and heavier braking, which is good. Part of it’s for style, but let’s be honest, it is also capable of dissipating heat. The big thing you notice here is these are 16-inch tires. A lot of scooters are 10-inch or 12-inch. 16-inch diameter rims is only one inch shorter or one inch less than a typical sport bike. So you really have some options here with tires and these ones are very good.
Now you’ll notice on a regular sports bike for instance, you have very little tread and that’s all designed to give you maximum speed, maximum grip on a drive surface. These ones are very good on dry surfaces. We’ve got a little bit of fuzz there, but they also have deep treads and lots of them. Which means this is a great scooter for all weather, which means if you’re commuting to work on this, you’ve got the wind protection, you’ve got the windscreen as well, but you also have great tires to travel in all conditions.
Sometimes I forget to show you the wheel and tire combination on the other side, of course, the brake is on the left side. This side gives you all the style of the wheel. That’s one of the things that the scooters do really well is they have a lot of style to their wheels here. It just looks cool in person. I’m not sure how well it’ll show up on camera, but it looks really cool in person.
Coming back to the left side, this is one of the things that kind of makes scooters a little bit magical. A typical motorcycle will mount their engine up higher down here, and on a scooter you have all the weight really, really low. So even though the weight can sometimes be higher on a say 400 cc scooter than a 400 cc motorcycle, the weight is down low. So you have good weight that gives it some substance, but it’s down low, which makes it easier to handle. So all of this is ended transmission in here. You’ve got the dual springs on both sides. They’re variable rate springs. So what that means is these are kind of close together and then lower down in the spring it spreads out.
That helps to sort of anticipate smaller bumps, larger bumps, it’s just to really handle the weight of things like the weight of things as you load the scooter up. So that variable rate spring is something that’s sort of a more higher-end type thing and you’ve got it here. Let’s check a look the very back here as well.
When we were around the front side talking about the tires, we talked about this as sort of an all-weather type vehicle. And you see that here, you’ve got the typical sort of protects the vehicle from spray with this flap here, but you’ve got this extra piece mounted on for the license plate. You’ve got the light in there as well, but it comes way down here. So it’s going to really keep that rain from spraying anything else back here? Keep your passenger clean, keep the whole thing cleaner. Just a little thought put into how you’re going to use this and you can use it in all weather.
So now let’s talk riding position. First of all, the benefit of a scooter, even though this one comes up higher, you can still step through. It’s just easier to get on a scooter than lifting your leg over on a motorcycle. So very easy to get on. I’m about six feet tall and you can see my knee room here is very good. There’s good width to the bike as well. And you can see I’m very comfortable. Now I’m on the center stand, I’m a little higher than normal and you can see, “Oh, how do I fit to the ground?” Well, because it’s on the center stand, I’m a little bit tippy-toed, but let’s just pull it off that for a second. Do that really gently here, trying to stay in the shot.
One of the things people get caught up on is seat height. And you can see if I come all the way back here, I’m kind of tippy-toed here. And people, the only spec that they show for motorcycles when you’re comparing for one to the other is the seat height. What they don’t talk about is how the seat narrows. If you are shorter than me, when you come to a stop, you’re going to sit forward on the seat. Because that seat narrows at the front it allows you to quite easily reach the ground, even flat-footed on both sides. It’s not a big problem to ride this if you’re a shorter rider. So one benefit to this, you do have a side stand, which we’ll use right now, and I’m going to put it back on the center stand for a second. The side stand is nice, we usually tilt the wheel when we use that.
But the center stand is good because I can do a lot of things, including sitting on the back. So the center stand, really easy to put on. A lot of people think the center stand is difficult to use. You’ve got a really good handle right here, which means you can pull up here just for stability. You put your weight down there and it lifts up. Even though this is a bit of a heavier scooter, it’s not a problem for most people to put on the center stand.
Down there, you’ve got footpegs for your passengers. I’m going to put them both down. Going to hop on the front again here. So again, you can see me sitting here. If I was riding on the back, you come up and higher. Now this is a big benefit on a typical touring motorcycle sitting higher, you don’t just have to kind of lean left and right to see past the driver.
You can generally see over the driver as well unless they’re significantly taller than you, but you get a good seated position. Again, even as a six-footer, I fit fine here, the driver would fit fine there. I’ve got the handles here to hold onto. I’ve got the driver to hold onto. And with this extra cargo area with the backrest, I know that when it’s accelerating, I’m not going anywhere. So when the bike leans in the corner, this is going to guide me, tell me where I need to lean. And it’s very easy to not distract the driver, because on a regular motorcycle without the backrest, they might lean the bike and you don’t know it’s leaning. Whereas here you can feel what’s going on with the bike right on the backrest, which is why this is a great accessory if you’re going to take a passenger.
Now let’s look at the cargo space, which is in here, in here, and in there. The first cargo thing I want to show you is this little clip right here. It’s such a simple little clip. If you slide in from this side, you have, the circle separates, and you can hold something like a purse, a grocery bag, some other thing between your legs. It’s common on so many scooters and it is available in this one. So you can have something sit down here and also be secured between your legs and up on this hook here. So it’s something simple and it allows you to sort of have a diverse set of things.
Down here is where you fill the fuel. There’s electronic thing that pops that up, so that’s not… It looks like a panel, it’s not a storage panel. And then you just press this in and you’ve got this little glove box and that’s really all it is. You can put a little bit of your phone in here, little spaces here there. There’s also a space in this door here. The point is you’re going to store your wallet, your phone, your very basic stuff right here. And you could store gloves if you wanted to ride with gloves on this. But that’s kind of all of that’s useful for.
Then what you do is you press the button on top of here and on the handlebar and you can open the seat. So pressing this button here with your left hand allows that seat to unlatch and then you can open it up. Once it’s unlatched, it lifts easily from the back. It’s the very lightweight seat. You could fit two helmets in here. I would go with half-face helmets if that’s what your goal is. If you want a full face helmet, you’re going to want to get the back rack, which we’re going to show you in a second. But a lot of gear can be held in here. So keep in mind when you’re riding, your helmets are out of here and all the gear you want to take with you can sit down here. When you’re not riding, you can take that gear out. If you keep it in a little bag, it makes it super simple. And then you can put your helmets in here and you don’t have to carry your helmets with you everywhere you go.
If you’re looking for more space, I really do recommend this accessory. You just stick the key in like that. You turn it to the right and the top pops up. You do have some bungee straps here, which you can unclip to keep something in here. Keep it kind of nice and settled. If you turn in the key the opposite way, it will actually unlatch from the scooter and you can take it with you by taking that handle there. So we’re going to leave it latched onto the scooter, locked onto the bike. But again, you have the ability to take this off with you and take it inside. You can take a little bit of clothes for the weekend or something like that and extra gear, but you can easily take it on and off the scooter. And again, like I said, it gives you that backrest for the passenger, which both gives them some security and helps guide them when you’re driving.
So who is this scooter for? Well, Piaggio likes to advertise that urban chic, European stylish kind of thing. That ain’t me. But this works very well for someone like me. And I think that’s the thing is, if you look at how you may want to ride this, maybe you live here in New Brunswick near Fredericton. You want to go from small town to small town, you want to take a passenger. There just aren’t a lot of options in North America for small, efficient, quiet, so that you can hear things around you scooters or motorcycles that can take two people in comfort. And that’s what this is.
It’s small, it’s efficient, it’s comfortable, and you can easily take two people. Now, if you don’t care about taking two people, this still has a lot of benefit. It’s a very comfortable upright riding position with good weather protection that you can ride through town. Maybe you have a lot of hills in your area and you want to get up to speed. Maybe your daily commute includes highway or freeway driving. You want to go on the higher speeds. This can do that for you and can do it in comfort with good protection and good visibility. And again, one of the benefits of a scooter, those quieter engines, they always talk about loud pipes, save lives. Well, there’s a lot of debate about that. One of the things I like about driving quieter motorcycles means you can hear all the things around you.
You can hear traffic approaching you. You can hear all kinds of things, including even nature, sometimes when you’re stopped at stoplights or other things. So it’s pretty cool to ride something like this that’s easy to own, great on fuel, super fun to drive. And because this is far more motorcycle-like you can really get into the turns a little bit more and have some more fun with it.
Jim Gilbert's PowerSports 