Modern Vespa

I was lucky enough to get over to Italy for a bit and made sure to try and go over to Pontedera to tour the Museum. I often see folks kinda pan the museum, but we really enjoyed it. We paid a bit extra for a guide and whether bc it was slow (off season), or she just liked us, we got an extended visit.

Seeing a 98, the OG prototype, 2 real ss90's, a Hoffman, a Messerschmidt, and all the rare widebody scoots up close were just fantastic. Since they bought Gillera they had a whole room of their Motos as well as some Moto Guzi stuff to look at.

Now a small, pedantic quibble... all the sport models I checked had aftermarket trim, not ulma.. and I clocked some phillips head screws where slotted/flathead screws should have been. *ahem*

Aside from all that, the town itself is kinda off the beaten path and far less touristy than other spots. We had our best meal of the entire trip there at Trattoria Butti and had a blast drinking at the Hotel Armonia bar with some travelers and the staff. The hotel is straight out of a Wes Anderson movie and the vibes were just amazing.

Anyho.... a few quick pics to follow.

Pics:

BN, thanks for the post and pics. I would love to get over there one day. Meanwhile, this will do.

Ultimate Bodgespotting

They need to read their audience better. Who else is going to make a trip to an off-the-path museum in an off-the-path city than the sort of nerds who would notice that sort of thing.

I get that curating old stuff is hard, but they should still do better than that, because it makes me wonder what other details they got wrong rather than appreciating all the stuff they got right.

(Of course, my Day Job is basically spotting and pointing out bad decisions, so I may be over-focusing on this, but still...)

I was there during the Vespa World days this year, was a great experience even though super crowded of course.

I used the opportunity to check some tiny details on a 1953 VM that i needed to find out for my restoration and also noted some inconsistencies on the Vespa's. Ah well it's just great that there is a place in the world where the full history of this brand can be found!

You´d lóve the Nimbus museum. But then the family who owned the factory/brand donated ALL (from tools to the original design drawing and all records) to nerds for them to museum it.

Blame Agnelli Clan, Fiat uses tiny Philips


VespaHub

Thanks for the visit report BN. I'm glad you had a good time! IMO it is worth the visit for any Vespisti!

I had the pleasure of visiting the museum back in the year 2000, just a few months after it was opened. I was staying in Pisa, and rode the train over to the factory. It was a great day, and at the time they were doing factory tours. The tours were not available the day we were there, and the staff felt so bad that they hooked us up with all sorts of swag, books, and goodies. I really enjoyed seeing all the different models, even with minor detail discrepancies; and all the weird models.

After our visit to the museum, we went to the local Vespa parts house to check out the local wares. I was asking about vintage scooters and parts, all they had was the usual fare, nothing I couldn't get in the states at the time. A local italian who spoke great english, overhead my convo and approached, asking if we are interested in visiting some 'off the books' vespa spots. HECK YEA!!! We chatted for a long time, and exchanged info. He says "rent a car, pick me up; and I'll take you to all the good spots" I had a good feeling, so yeah we went for it!

The next day, met him near Pontedera, a went for a cruise! Through the Italian country side, out to the coast. We went to many little shops, dug through bins and boxes, drooled over rare scoots. One spot out in the deep country side, in a run down barn, packed with parts/frames/scoots/everything! One nice store front outside of pisa, with pristine showroom. One guy had a whole restoration shop in the basement, down an alley, under some stairs, no sign. You'd never know it was there! Backroom machine shop and parts hoard! It was like discovering the catacombs. Turned out he restored many of the Vespa's in the museum. I got some rare parts that day. Packed a whole huge suitcase to bring home. We ate some good food, had some good times; and shared an experience of a lifetime. I'll never forget that day, and all the little moments; b

Geeklion that could have gone soooo wrong I would have chickened out. Glad it worked out for you.

LOL!!! You're not wrong, and thankfully it went right. Now that I think about it, thats about how most of my life goes.

Thank you BN for the tour!

And GL - what a great story and adventure!

No great story ever starts, "We boarded the tour bus as per our group's itinerary..."

Seriously! I consider myself an opportunistic adventure seeker, and informed disaster avoider. Usually I know the risk, and jump in anyway. Lots of fun to be had this way. And good stories for me to forget when I'm an old raisin. We'll see how many laps around the sun I can actually complete

Hey now Birdsnest, self-serving question -- was the mighty Hamburglar still on display there?

Large chunks of my lie can be summarised with ´it looked like a good idea at the time´.

Now titanium hips, ditto shoulder, two fused discs and minor side effects of near boiled brain cells.

The latest such good idea is a (much) younger gf moving in with me.

Back on topic I think it rather cheeky of Piaggio to display that Hoffmann Werke model: It is THE one which saw them cancel the license agreement per immediately

I love everything about this. Good on ya. I missed a moto parts swap meet by a day in Milan and have a bag full of regret about it. The good thing... I have the means to go back next year and plan to. I'm pretty sorted on Vespas but want to hunt tools and accessories etc. They had a bunch of touring Vespas and their associated stories. The Dali vespa was the one I gravitated to. Sadly, I don't remember seeing the hamburgler, but I wasn't focused on that section really aside from the Dali. They noted it! The current temp display room is "Vespa's of the World" and had models from most of the licensed manufacturers. They specifically mentioned the Hoffman model as the one that violated the license and caused Messerschmidt to begin production.

I have heard or read that vehicles used as museum pieces are often not the best examples or the most rigorously restored. I'd love to see it though, as well as the VW museum.

This. Museums typically can't afford proper concourse-grade restorations, so they take what they can afford.

Also, there's the question of "restoration" versus "preservation," which I'd never given much thought to until our trip down to Mike Wolfe's collection where he's big on preservation. He has super-rare barn find bikes that he said literally he's never even cleaned the dust off.

So a museum full of shiny bikes obviously went the restoration direction, and all the risk of inaccuracies if the restorer doesn't have a record of exact details to work against.

Still...how hard is it to find flat blade screws? That's just poor attention to detail, IMO.

That, like always, depends. As a blank statement incorrect.

This has in Europe been a thing as long as I can remember really. ´Restoring´ almost per definition involves destroying originality ánd the history of the object.
Next comes the issue of period modification a vehicle has grown during its useful life. Not factory original but...

Mány museums start out as someones hobby collection. Then the collection quality stands and falls with the criteria/budget of the person(s) involved.
See you example!
Then the enthusiast dies or what.

As to factory museums, VAG is renowned for spending silly money. They spent a not small fortune on recreating the AutoUnion racers per example.
As such nóthing original but at least to as original as possible spec. Even thát poses a challenge because modern materials and the loss of craftsmanship have consequences.

In between lies a wórld.
The Moto Guzzi museum used to be about preserving and originality. This meant though that the rácers had the látest periods upgrades. It was kept up as a hobby of the pensioned factory workers.


The Philips vs flathead should imo have been caught really by the museum but then it probably has a commercial goal to respect.

I ride the fence in my personal collection between pres and resto.
I think if you're not cleaning the dust off a barn find you may have gone a bit too far down the preservation hole though. (No offense to Mike Wolfe.) If I can keep a bike OG paint I will every time, but if it's too fucky to save I try to do a proper resto. Maybe not concourse as I don't have those skills. But, I try and find as much OG goodness as I can.

Also, I didn't mean to dis Piaggio for the small inaaccuracies... just worth a mention. There are other museums like Barbers in Alabama (which is a MUST visit experience) that have some really poor restorations. In example 2 Vespas displayed were shiny, but non factory colors and a mismatch of parts from different models/years.

That said, the volume of bikes at Barbers is just fascinating. You need a full day there to take it all in.

My experience with the Museo Piaggio was fairly positive -- I can't remember who reached out first, but I had my Millennium PX on its last legs, and they offered to put it in their collection, and I thought that was a perfect solution to storing this scooter that had tremendous sentimental value. And wasn't something I planned on keeping as a daily rider, or having to store somewhere. So, I rode it from Budapest to Pontedera, signed a loan contract for 7 years, they gave me a keychain and a mug, and that was it. But not before Marco from VWD took me out for a spin in his Ape to pick up some parts at a local retailer.

What's interesting is that the museum is literally in the same complex as the assembly plant -- they gave me a tour where I saw the (2nd last year?) of the PX-scoots being built, with all these women threading gear cables in at breakneck speed, and I also saw the GTS production line where there's a bucket of NO PETS stickers for bikes destined for American export -- and yet they can't just waltz over to the factory and grab the correct slotted screw or whatever. They're very separate entities.

I also get the sense that they're laser-focused on preserving the heritage of this Italian industrial icon. It's at odds, kinda, with selling more new scooters, which theoretically is Piaggio's MO.

Oh, quite the opposite, I'd argue. Half of the price premium that Vespas command is probably the historic tie-back to the romanticized images of post-war scooterists, the Mods, etc.

That's not to say the modern bikes aren't really solid pieces of kit, just that they are not materially better than a competing Honda or Yamaha from a functional perspective, just cooler.

Interesting points. It's a wide and blurry spectrum of ways to preserve or restore a vehicle.

As part of my deep dive into painting, I was looking up info on color sanding and deliberately choosing to leave some amount of orange peel in new paint. Pretty much, no in terms of color sanding how to info.

But in the restoration world, deliberately painting an orange peel finish is totally a thing. There is Asian peel, European peel, etc. Purist restoration shops will have color samples of different types and grades of peel.

Yeah - refurbish vs restore. I call what I do refurbish, some call it restore.

I just know they are back on the road and not a showroom queen.

This is the best class of scooter. Ride ready reliable, with character and history!

I have a couple of friends who are heavily into wideframe, handlebar, early Douglas Vespas. You can get flat screws, but ones that are actually correct are apparently harder to find than hen's teeth. If they get one from an unsalvegeable wreck they're very happy indeed. Then they might get it re-plated, but it must be the correct colour etc etc.

That's a pretty extreme level of detail. We're just talking basic casual-but-knowledgeable observer grade stuff here.

I've turned a lot of screws and nuts in my life, on a lot of different things. Perchance someone wants to post a picture of said elusive hen tooth?

After arriving in Italy we were on train, heading to Pisa to meet family... one of the stops was Pontedera.... i needed to be restrained from jumping off train, specially when I saw the water tower!

Rode a Vespa there a few days later

I am mind-locked into this early 90's vision of restoration that calls for shiny new paint, eradicating all rust and making heroic attempts to avoid the use of filler.

Since then, many variations of restoration and preservation have become widely known thanks to huge internet communities that represent anything on wheels. They can be a blessing and a curse; being able to find good advice, but resisting the wrath of whatever sub group that's going to hate what you've done.

It's not something I've seen on this forum. Being mind-locked on anything is never good. Might try a touch-up refresh and deliberately leave some lumps on my next project. Just to change it up and keep it fun. If I hate it, I can always go back to shiny paint.

I've just noticed the racers in the background of the photo of the red 90ss.

Very cool!

What a story!
Quite a few of those bikes say "on loan thanks to the generosity of So and So."

We went on to Ravenna but the Mauro Pascoli museum was closed for the Easter holiday

There's also the Marco Fumagalli collection in Milan on the bucket list.
Someday. His collection is insane.

https://www.mauropascoli.it/museo.php#
https://asimusei.it/museo/collezione-marco-fumagalli/

We tried to squeeze this in, but couldn't make the timing work. Next time.