Motor scooters, built as cheap postwar transport, are back with a vengeance and a green, hip attitude.

Australia, like the US, is a large, affluent place with cheap petrol, hence our common embrace of the large sedan, wagon and four-wheel-drive as the prime mode of transport.

The size-and-price-equals-status formula derived from the US sums up our attitude to cars. It's the same story with motorcycles – small-capacity two-wheelers are just interim steps to a real bike: a Harley, Ducati or BMW.

We look contemptuously at scooters as weird little things that go brrangg-dang-dang-dang and appeal only to the eccentric or the Third World poor.
In Europe since the end of World War II, however, the scooter has been a powerful symbol of liberation and a fascinating barometer of economic and social trends.advertisement
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It's small, equally accessible to women and men, young and old, and cheap. Tens of millions have been sold.

The scooter has become imbued, thanks to clever marketing and its minimalist engineering, with a joyous, simple philosophy that says less is more.

Yet it has also stayed at the sharpest edge of fashion across the decades.

Like Ferrari, Armani and Chanel, the scooter remains an icon of Euro chic.

Australia and the US have no equivalent, on four wheels or two. The scooter is the antithesis of power, speed, size and exclusivity – the values that, if you flick forward a couple of pages from this story and look at a few ads, still clearly define a classy set of wheels in our culture.

A recent boom in scooter sales, particularly in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, shows some people are looking beyond these cliches.

Scooters are still marginal contributors to the national fleet, but in a total bike market of just over 30,000 in 2001, they accounted for about 10 percent. Sales were up 23 percent on 2000.

This year, business continues to expand, fuelled by a rapid growth of choice, styles and prices. Italian makers, including Vespa, Piaggio, Benelli and Gilera, dominate the market. The French, Spanish, Japanese and Koreans are also represented.

At the bottom end of the scooter chain, you can buy a 50cc PGO Gelati, BUG Bandit or TGB Akros for less than $3000.

And if you think those names are out there, how about the Benelli Naked, Gilera Ice, Malaguti Yesterday and TGB Voodoo? Or the Honda Crea Scoopy?

The top-seller is the Vespa ET4, a 150cc four-stroke. Vespa – it means "wasp" in Italian – is, and always has been, the coolest brand in world scooterdom.

Its style and structure has changed little since Enrico Piaggio decided in 1945 that what postwar Italy needed was cheap personal mobility. He commissioned Corradino D'Asconia, an aeronautical engineer who apparently hated motorcycles, to design the first model, which was released in 1946.

Sales took off in the 1950s as more people, especially the young, could afford their own wheels, and marketers gave the Vespa a persona which contrasted with the generally dour temper of the times.

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck brought romance, freedom and fun to the Vespa badge when they toured Italy two up in Roman Holiday (1953).

The Vespizzatevi (Vespa Yourselves!) advertising campaign of 1956 enlisted artists and writers to give the brand a bohemian polish. Since than, various young urban tribes – notably the English Mods in the 1960s, and the Mod revival inspired by the Who's film, Quadrophenia, in the 1970s, the Punks in the 1980s and today's Gen Y-ers – have found the Vespa's carefully crafted image irresistible.

Britain is in the throes of yet another scooter craze, inspired by television personalities. Kitchen whizz Jamie Oliver, for example, nips around London on his Vespa. The Poms, though, generally go for more futuristic, aggressive looking scooters with a performance edge. Peugeot's Speedfight (also available here) is the hot toy at present.

Vespa sales in Australia grew by 70 percent in 2001, and continue on an upward curve. The appeal of the wasp to Sydneysiders is practical as well as aesthetic.
"People are interested in the Vespa because it's a great alternative to public transport or a car," said Ralph Leavsey-Moase of Scooteria, a Sydney Vespa/Piaggio/Gilera dealership.
"You can park them almost anywhere, which means door-to-door mobility in the city. They're also clean, fashionable and, with an automatic transmission, they're much easier to ride than a normal bike.

"These factors make them very attractive to women. Lots of gay boys and girls are interested, [as are] couples who want to ditch the second car."

It's a style-conscious, inner-city clientele, predominantly twentysomethings, and 50 percent of Leavsey-Moase's customers are women. There is a wide range of incomes and buyers are happy to pay a premium by bike standards.

The Vespa 150 ET4 costs $6495. The 125cc model is $5995. This is close to what you'd pay for a conventional 250cc bike, say a Kawasaki ZZR250. To use a four-wheeled analogy, that's like lining up a Hyundai Excel against a Commodore V8.

The ownership finances are tempting. The ET4 will do 30-40 kilometres a litre, so the daily commute can cost less than a dollar. Some 50cc models claim 1.4 litres/100 km.

Servicing costs over 10,000km come to about $550, which includes a new back tyre. These last about 7000-8000km.

The NSW Government gets its usual gouge – registration costs about $300 a year, as does comprehensive insurance. If you decide to sell after a couple of years, you'll get about $5500 back in resale value.

The ET4's 150cc single overhead camshaft four-stroke engine delivers 9kW of power – one-seventeenth the output of a six-cylinder Commodore – but weighs only 104kg against a Holden's 1.6 tonnes.

The Vespa's frame is pressed steel, with plastic bodywork. The engine drives the back wheel via a continuously variable auto with a centrifugal clutch, so there are no gears. Wheels are 10-inch alloys, brakes are disc front/drum rear, you get an electric and kick starter, electronic ignition and an engine immobiliser.

This last feature won't stop a couple of thieves – or one who works out every day – simply picking up your ET4 and putting it in the back of a ute.

The Vespa's utilitarian origins are evident in design touches that are perfectly suited to city use. You can store your helmet and gloves under the ET4's seat, or use this space to carry gear. Another storage bin is in the bodywork in front of your knees. A hook, on which you can hang a shopping bag or two, flicks out from the front of the seat.

It's nicely balanced, so rocking it back on to the centrestand requires minimal effort. There's room on the seat for two, and space on the floor for four feet.
Hop on, hit the starter button and the engine settles quickly into a smooth idle. Then it's just a matter of twisting the right handgrip and you're away.

The ET4 doesn't exactly blast off from the lights, though it holds its own against the cars if you give the throttle a decent tweak. The engine works best in the 40-80kmh range; you can see 100 on the speedo if you find a long-enough straight.

Performance is sufficient just to feel confident in the city. I took the ET4 on a circuit around the congested inner-west, where it was great. On the Western Distributor, I had to extract the full 9kW worth to stay with the traffic at 80-90kmh. The 150 held its own but I wouldn't make a habit of travelling on arterials on the 125. On a 50, you'd just be target practice.

Amazingly light and manoeuvrable, the Vespa requires no effort to steer; the trick is to relax, with a light grip on the bars, and ride it from the hips, shifting your weight to change direction. It will do a U-turn on the proverbial 20-cent piece.

I almost launched myself over the bars the first time I went for the brakes – left lever for the rear, right for the front. They are a bit vicious and require only the lightest of finger pressures. The tiny wheels, which help give the Vespa such flickability in corners, are inherently less stable than larger wheels, especially when you hit a bump. They also tend to tuck under a bit in a tight corner, but this is easily countered.

The suspension and well-padded seat provide a comfortable ride, but the short wheel travel compromises both stability and, when you hit a few bumps, your connection with the seat. When it's a bit windy, the Vespa's featherlight weight and full plastic suit also can make life interesting. If it's really blowing, the Vespa will probably change lanes all by itself.

Still, there's something quite serene about the way it putts along, quietly and smoothly, amid the surging, heaving herd of massive metal beasts.

Sitting at the lights on your little machine, you can't help but think how excessive, intrusive and wasteful they are, especially when 90 percent seem to have only the driver aboard.

You're doing exactly the same thing – going to work, or the shops – yet occupying a fraction of the space, spending small change, endangering no-one else and doing minimal damage to the planet.

Sydney would be a far more sociable, safe, livable town if the Italian wasp took over from the Detroit dinosaur.

State lines

In NSW, scooters are treated as motorcycles, which means you must undertake RTA-approved pre-learner and pre-provisional training and you need a licence and helmet to ride one. For a restricted licence to ride a 125cc automatic scooter, the pre-provisional training component is not required. Contact the RTA on 132 213.

On record

In 1951, Dino Mazzoncini set a world scooter record for the flying kilometre with an average speed of 171kmh on a streamlined 125cc twin-cylinder Vespa Siluro. In 2000, the Piaggio Museum was opened on the site of one of the original Vespa factories in Pontedera, southern Italy. Designed by Andrea Bruno, it houses collections of Vespa, Piaggio and Gilera models.

Benelli's Adiva 125, a radical take on the conventional scooter, has a plastic windscreen, wipers and a folding roof that stows in the top box behind the seat.

Get one at Northside Motorcycles, Artarmon. But Australian Design Rules require a glass windscreen, so it cannot be registered. The importer is negotiating with the rule makers.