Modern Vespa

The Vespa Club de Mediterraneo are planning a scooter trip next October from Marrakech in Morocco to Dakar in Senegal. The trip will be about 1,650 miles through the Sahara, along the Atlantic coast. It will be arranged by our friends at Scoot West Africa, who are very good at this sort of thing. The cost will be in the neighborhood of €2,000, which comes to about $2,350.00. There will be 15 bikes available, of which six are already spoken for - with several MV members amongst those already.

We plan to get together in Casablanca and travel to Marrakech, by train, to meet up with the bikes. At this time, the plan is to leave Marrakech on October 7 and arrive in Dakar on October 18. These dates might shift a little, but not by much.

The bikes are 107 cc Chinese clones of the Honda Super Cub. Ten of us rode bikes like these last year from Dakar to Guinea-Bissau, and did not experience any mechanical problems at all. They are, by far, the most popular two wheelers in West Africa. Roland tried to bring one home to the US, but was hampered by US Customs and Transportation Department regulations. Specifications are listed below.

If you are interested in taking part in an amazing adventure, please let Roland know at:

Roland Henry
roland@tmisc.org

For those that do not know the history, the VCdM was started by MV member Aviator47 (Al Fragola) ten years ago, when he organised a Greek Islands Rally in 2009:
Greek Islands Scooter Rally May 2009 - SOLD OUT!!!!

Since then there have been one or two trips every year since - and although Al very sadly died in December 2016, the club has continued to arrange trips with Roland as the coordinator with the wonderful help of Maria, our travel agent on Paros.

Do note that only experienced riders should even think about this, and expect to rough it a bit!


Cub Power K, made in China by New World Motor Industry
Key Specifications/Special Features:
Displacement: 107 cc
Drive system: Chain drive
Tire Size: 2.5-17 2.75-17
Dimension (mm): 1950*650*1110
Max speed (km/h) : 75km/h
Fuel tank: 4.0L
Brake (Fr./Rr.): Drum/drum
Starting type: Electric start, Kick start
Max power and rotate speed: 4.5/7500km/rpm
Max torque and rotate speed: 6.5/5500N.m/rpm
Minimum ground clearance(mm) 130
Wheel base (mm) 1280
Unladen mass(kg): 96
Load capacity(kg): 150
Ignition: CDI
Compression ratio: 9:1[/code]





Last edited by jimc on Thu Jan 02, 2020 5:59 pm; edited 4 times in total

sounds like an amazing trip, but the link to Roland Henry doesn't work ?

Thanks for the heads-up. That seems to an MV quirk, removing all but the alias from a properly formatted email address.

It might be intentional to prevent the email from being picked up by spam crawlers?

This trip sounds awesome!!