Scootover wrote:
The way I see it is,Piaggio had many many years to get the shifting 2 stroke right.They failed in so much as the past P & PX's still had to many problems that required constant maintenance and adjustments to keep em on the road.A scooter is a form of transportation,and as such should perform flawlessly for years without constant intervention.If Piaggio can pull off the P look using the non shifting auto 4,nothing could be better. Even now today,the Stella's require much more attention than it's counter parts.Even if there were no environmental regulations,the shifting 2 stroke would have easily lost out to auto 4 strokes,just by their nature.
With all due respect, Scootover, I have to take issue with your "getting the shifting 2 stroke right" comment. As I have posted before, most "maintenance" on P series Vespas (particularly in the US market) is voluntary tinkering followed by the maintenance the voluntary tinkering generates. I have been riding 2T shift Vespas for over 50 years, and have owned them for 44 years. Even in times of parts scarcity, I found them reliable. But then, my approach was to drive them in the manner intended and maintain them by the book. The introduction of electronic ignition made the constant attention to the breaker points a thing of the past. If one looks closely, one will not find Malossi, Pinacso and the like recommended as part of the periodic maintenance in the manual. I have no issues with these products, but simply point them out as examples of "voluntary tinkering". Performance products exist to make the Vespa perform in a manner other than the factory intended.
One cannot evaluate the P Series in terms of the US market. First, it was absent from the US for much of its production run. Second, it was never bought primarily for transportation until very, very recently. Indeed, PTWs are difficult to evaluate in terms of the US market, as that market is insignificant in global terms, and again, the PTW has never been the kind of widely adopted transportation that it is and has been in Europe and Asia.
There are a lot of reasons that automatic scooters appeared on the market, and the "reliability" of the P Series hardly wiggles the "reason why" meter. Body style, weight, price and ease of derestriction of 50cc models (a major issue in the EU) have a lot to do with it. The introduction of the larger, faster machines that also serve as "cruisers"also appealed to the market. And, I would imagine, automatic transmission appealed significantly to many riders. Automatic shift is a very popular item for cars as well as scooters. I remember a time in the late 50's and early 60's where some US cars could not be purchased with a manual transmission as it made no economic sense to tool up to produce one to fit the specific engine. Manual transmissions were found on "performance" models, and low end "business coupes". It wasn't until the Japanese expansion into the markets that manual trans became common across a variety of everyday models again.
All in all, the move from the classic shifty to the modern automatic was based on market factors in Europe and Asia, and the US got what those markets dictated. But millions of Europeans and Asians drove their 2T manual Vespas quite happily.
As to Stella, while it is a decent scoot, it was never built to the same level of quality as the Vespa P. Not a bad machine, but still, one or two pegs down on the quality scale. It cannot be used as a proxy as to whether Piaggio ever "got the 2T manual right".
Last of all, a good indication of the durability of the 2T Vespa is the difficulty the Italian government has had in trying to get these off the road in their environmental clean up drive. They instituted a program of providing a government buy back program, offering a significant price on the trade in of an older Vespa for a newer scoot, and it had a marginal impact. The Vespas traded in would be destroyed. People using the 2T manual Vespa were not ready to give up these trusty little machines, and either kept them or sold them privately to others who wanted a trusty little machine.
When the current Vespas have 30 years of production and use under their belts, then we can make an accurate comparison of reliability.
An automatic Vespa with a PX body would be an interesting product, if possible to build. I would hold no animosity toward it. My 1962 VNB served me well for 41 years, and I only sold it because of the move here from the US. I expect my 2006 PX to do the same. Thus, I might just be too old to entertain buying an auto PX when my current one is due for replacement. But I will keep an open mind. It is a lovely body style.
Al
