Modern Vespa

I've been seeing a lot of gts's with the chrome side guards and was trying to decide if I liked the look or not. As far as guards has anyone dropped a bike with them on? Do they actually prevent damage to the side of the bike? (Not my bike in photo)

Cannot really answer the question 100% but looking at the OEM Vespa crashbars the installation and fittings look way more solid than the ones from Faco, normally cheap means cheeper steel, so might be better Vespa OEm.

A riding buddy had her 300 knocked over during what we can only assume was a parallel parking mishap by a car.

The bike was on its side when we came out from dinner.

Under these circumstances, the crash bars prevented serious damage to the body and kept the bike from being totaled. She had to surrender the scooter for at least a month while the shop worked with insurance and waited on parts to get everything back to pre-crash condition.

There's plenty of old threads discussing these over the years woth mostly positive reviews. Here's a couple of links....

GTS Crash Bars - Are They Effective? Or Just Decorative?

Do chrome kits protect you from dropped scooters?

I personally like the Looks of the side rail and any added protection it may provide is a bonus.......

Agree about Faco crash bars.
Those made for my Vespbretta-looking Kymco attach to the plastic skin of the scooter.
While the OEM Kymco bars are solidly bolted through to the frame at the rear.

O.S.

The Vespa OEM rear crash bars do mount very solidly to the frame of the bike.

They will help to minimize (maybe prevent) damage in the event of a tip over and they work well if you bump into something while pushing the scoot around. Any incident above 15 mph is beyond their capabilities.

The chroming is very good, but it needs attention with some polish at least once/year.

My OEM bars held up very well in a bad accident I had on my previous GTS. I removed them and installed them on my replacement GTS. They are very good quality and can help in minor incidents.