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 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.