Modern Vespa

FYI back in 2001 I also read and watched the development...


The "New" Piaggio MP3 Motor Scooter...or....Haven't I Seen This Somewhere Before? by Gary Picariello
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/60921/the_new_piaggio_mp3_motor_scooterorhavent.html

the future ? check out the VECTRIX Electrix Scooter...they also bought from Italjet the rights to the technology !

The Vectrix electrix scooter leased the technology from PiaggioCo not Italjet. The front suspension of the Italjet Scoop is unrelated to the MP3/Fuoco. The Scoop appears to use a simple pivot arm with linkage which I suspect would be unstable at any actual speed. One can speculate that the Scoop concept influenced the Piaggio engineers but it could just as well have been that Italjet showed off a poorly engineered non-working leaning 3-wheeler at the Milan show in response to rumors that Piaggio was working on such a concept. The future? Well, Piaggio has the 125, 250, and 400/500 engines in their 3-wheeler; the only thing left is a Fuoco-800.

My impression was that they brought the technology when they purchased Aprilia. go to http://www.aprilia.com/apriliamuseo_eng.asp and look at year 2001-2000. Look for the Los Angeles prototype.

If you click on the image it will give you the specs. Theirs was to be a 500CC - shoot that would have been a sweet motor, I like aprilias.

Ps - that saddle looks even shorter than the MP3

I dunno man. They have a habit of putting Piaggio 500s in thei rbikes even before the buyout (e.g., Atlantic 500 & the o.g. Scarabeo 500)... those are MASTER500s.

I did not know that about the engines. Come to think of it the 1000CC aprilias were Rotax designed and built.

However, back to the original thread. Is Aprilia the origin of this current Piaggio MP3 design?

interesting site
http://www.troisroues.com/english.html

Great find. I agree that the 2001 Los-angeles prototype was probably the origin of the PiaggioCo 3-wheeler. By the way, both the 1994 Lama concept scooter (looks like a bunny rabbit) and the 1995 Moto-6.5 prototype were built by the French designer Philippe Starck. Personally, I love the styling of the 1960 Sport-Uomo in the last row.