#Piaggio

This week’s Top 10 comes to us courtesy of Miguel Galluzzi. Mr. G is best known for designing Ducati’s original Monster and starting the modern naked-bike movement, but before that he also penned Ducati’s early ’90s 900 Supersports. He’s been a busy man ever since, and is currently director for PADC (Piaggio Advanced Design Center), in Pasadena, CA, where he – together with another design team in Noale, Italy – cooks up new Moto Guzzis, Aprilias and other Italian delicacies. —John Burns

The first Vespa to bear the name Primavera, that’s “springtime” to you and me, made its first appearance in 1968 and was revolutionary: small, agile, powered by a brilliant engine. Primavera placed wings on several generations and was produced without interruption until 1982, making it one of the widest commercial successes in Vespa history. Its new incarnation is a star in its own time, says Vespa: Youthful, innovative, technologically ground-breaking, agile and dynamic, with an eye to the protection of the environment, inheriting all the freshness and joy of living from its predecessor.

Maybe somebody beat you with a kickstand when you were a child, and you carry an irrational fear of them? Let it go, with the MP3 you can relax, you don’t need one. With a little practice, you can flip the right-thumb button inward just as you’re coming to a stop, which clamps the caliper to the ¼-of a brake-type disc which holds the MP upright. The people in the cars look at you with even greater suspicion. As soon as you twist the throttle to blast off, the lock releases and in town, most of the time, you’d never really know you had two wheels up front. (If you’re rolling backwards, though, the upright lock won’t release until you thumb the lever!) The lock-up mechanism even has its own ECU.

Five years ago this month MO reported that Bombardier Recreational Products had filed a patent as far back as 2009 for a control system that’d allow the Can-Am Spyder to lean. Later that same year it came to light that Harley-Davidson had been developing a similar tilting three-wheeler ( the Penster) for years before scrapping the project and moving in a more traditional-trike direction with the Tri-Glide and recently introduced Freewheeler. Well, guess what? The leaning reverse trike charge isn’t being led or financed by BRP or H-D and their incredibly deep pockets. At the vanguard of the full-size tilting trike revolution is a lone engineer in a garage somewhere in Snohomish, WA.

More news from the Piaggio camp at EICMA 2015 is the Medley scooter. However, it is not slated to come to the U.S. Powered by Piaggio’s new iGet 125cc and 150cc electronically fuel injected, liquid-cooled, four-valve engines, the Medley comes standard with the “Start & Stop” feature, which shuts the engine off at stops to help improve fuel economy.

After 18 years and 900,000 units sold, the Piaggio Liberty ABS has been refreshed with new engines, new ergonomics, new active safety systems, and new lines to go with the larger diameter wheels.

It really is a fine line between open-minded and cheap, between hip and hopeless, betwixt trending and tanking … and if you ride a scooter, you ride the razor’s edge, my friend. Obviously one has to be secure in one’s man or womanhood to even begin; my male college kid won’t be seen in the same garage with any scooter for fear it will dilute his musk. At the cool end of the scale, there’s our photographer/filmmaker/ballet dancer friend Richard Wright, who also finds time to head up the Bevery Hills Scooter Club and tear up Latigo Canyon on his bored-out Aprilia 250. At the other end, well, there’s yours truly on the Kymco Downtown 300i. How’s that for segue?

As far as scooters go, the Piaggio BV350 i.e. had me pretty excited. The reasoning is simple: its 330cc engine is the largest in this class (I don’t include the Suzuki Burgman 400 due to its maxi-scoot size and price), and Piaggio’s marketing materials highlighted it as being the best of both words – having the power of a bigger scoot with the maneuverability of a smaller one. If I may make this stretch of a comparison, the BV350 has a similar charm as the Suzuki GSX-R750 in that it feels like a hot-rodded version of a smaller bike without the restraint required on a bigger one.

I’m really anxious to drive the new Slingshot Polaris recently launched. With 170 horsepower in a 1725-lb package with side-by-side seating and an open top, it promises to deliver a fun factor unlike almost any other machine currently in production. But it’s not a motorcycle.

The front end of the Piaggio MP3 looks a bit like an angry Mutant Ninja Turtle or, if you stretch it, like a big scary frog. It’s a quirky scooter but the French seem to love it, having purchased nearly 70,000 of them. So, it was appropriate that Piaggio chose Paris as the city in which to launch the newest version of the MP3.

Piaggio‘s MP3 has been one of the most distinctive motor vehicles of the past decade, using two wheels up front, but able to lean like a true motorcycle. And it’s attracted an amazingly large fan base. The Italian company says it has sold 150,000 MP3s since the model line’s introduction in 2007.