So as I mentioned earlier, I've been thinking about a scooter for a while. And when I recently decided I would actually get one, I had to start thinking about what kind I would get.
My first decision was vintage versus modern. Vintage scooters look and sound so cool. In the past, when I imagined having a scooter and I pictured the bike, it was the vintage style - a big front shield, kind of spare looking. Maybe some chrome crash bars and racks. Scrapes and dents were OK.
Now when I say "vintage" here, I mean actually old. Maybe restored, but actually old like from 30+ years ago. There are new, modern scooters that have some vintage styling, but they are still modern scooters. And they do look very nice, but I really like that authentic vintage look.
For example, here's a vintage Vespa. It's got that big front leg shield. The handlebars and headlamp perch on top of the leg shield like a bug's head attached by a slim neck.
Here's a modern Vespa, an LX model. Very nice looking, and retro styled, but everything is just a little too something. Too many smoothed lines or something. I don't know if I am using the right word here, but on the vintage style, the individual parts are more "articulated" - the headlamp is like a separate thing that sits on top of the legshield - it isn't just gradually curved into the shield.
So, appearance-wise, I really preferred that authentic vintage look.
But vintage scooters have plenty of drawbacks.
The first, and most obvious one, is that they are old. Duh. Decades old. They'll break down quite a bit. They'll pollute more than a modern scooter engine. It's still less than a car, in terms of emissions per mile, but the newer scooters have the advantage there.
The vintage scooters are typically 2 stroke engines, which pollute more than the 4 stroke scooter engines. They require a gas and oil mixture in the tank. That can be a bit of a hassle, but not too bad. Just another thing to do. At least you don't need to get the oil changed - the oil changes itself as it burns up! On the plus side, 2 stroke engines are simpler than 4 stroke to maintain - there are a lot of things you can do yourself that you would have to take the 4 stroke in for service for. That can save you some money. Plus, living in the US (not in Rome), and over on the Eastside (not in downtown Seattle), there isn't a scooter service shop on every block.
Vintage scooters are usually manual, rather than the automatic "twist and go" 4 strokes. Some like it, some don't. It does take more getting used to than just twisting the throttle, and when you're new at it, every stop light is an opportunity for embarassing failure with carloads of angry drivers behind you, but whatever. They'll get over it.
There are a lot of shops in SE Asia restoring vintage scooters and selling them on eBay. Apparently, a lot of these restorations are little more than a coat of shiny paint over an unsafe bike. They'll weld two separate frames together from crashed scooters, use scrap metal to shim up stuff that doesn't fit together right, paint it, and sell it on eBay. I wouldn't buy one from eBay, but if you buy a restored vintage scooter from a private party here in the US, who's to say you aren't buying someone else's eBay mistake?
So ultimately, what did I end up with? I bought a new 2005 Vespa PX150, no big surprise if you read my initial posting on here about my new ride.
The Vespa PX 150 was first launched in 1977, and was one of the most popular Vespas of all time. In 1981, Vespa stopped selling scooters in the US. Then in 2001, they re-entered the North American market with the more modern scooters - the ET series and eventually the LXs and GranTurismos etc - the modern scooters. The PX 150 was sold here in the US for I think 2 years (2004 and 2005). It's an 80s era Vespa PX 150 with some modernizations in the technology, like auto-mixing of the gas and oil. But brand new. Of course we're still talking 2 stroke, manual and all the associated drawbacks (or benefits) of those things. It's not as reliable as the newly designed technology. I've been promised - it's going to break down. But it hasn't been rotting in a garage somewhere, or hit by a truck somewhere in SE Asia and glued back together.
But I'll tell you, it was a tough call. And it's funny how I went back and forth in just one day, looking at the PX 150 and the LX 150, particularly the LXV. I'll explain more next time.
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