Living with a Vespa! What is it really like? - Complete In Depth Review!

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.

Full Helpful Financing available... and our specialty