Wow, can't believe I came across this after 5 years.
In lieu of the fact that the poster didn't relay the entire ad, I will address your concerns. Had I been asked these questions, I would have answered them.
A brief history: I got this bike in a swap with my hair stylist who couldn't handle it in exchange for my Piaggio Free that I built out of spare parts we had lying around in the shop. It was a seized 125 at the time of acquisition. IT WAS MATT BLACK JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER VINTAGE VESPA ON THE ROAD. Boring. Overdone.
This bike got stripped down and rebuilt.
There was no rust under the rubber mat. I scraped all the gook and cleaned all rust prone areas prior to painting. Yes I sanded it beforehand.
The back of the bike is more or less visible in the last photo in the series. Craig's List would only let me post 4 photos, I had to leave one out. The back of the bike was fine.
The bike didn't come with a spare when I got it so I had no qualms about dropping an ammo box in the side cowl and welding it into place. Bam. Extra storage.
New side cowls are easier to find than bikes.
I was the sales manager at the scooter shop it was parked in the rear of and we had so many horn casts we gave them away like candy. I would have let one go with the bike but why would you want one? It looked super tough without it.
Color matching wouldn't have been an issue, it was olive drab spray paint from the local army/navy store. I gave a can away with the bike as a "touch up kit." It was as professional a spray job as you can get with an aerosol can. We grew up doing this with cars.
It had a BBQ rack on the back. The bike was worth buying just to get your hands on one.
Stock exhaust. Brand new head, cylinder and piston. Less than 100 miles on the kit. Total on the bike was 3600(ish).
I put (at retailer cost) $500 bucks worth of new parts in this bike, too much to list.
Your son at UGA most certainly DID NOT know the history on that bike unless he worked at the shop with us (he didn't) or was in the Fist City Scooter Club (probably not, they're all blue collar grown ups).
Yeah, the wiring hadn't been fixed yet. I gave a brand new wiring harness to the purchaser. I offered it as part of the original advertised deal.
These bikes and their parts aren't rare or holy, it's not a big deal to customize the body with a rotary saw and a torch. Attend an AmeriVespa rally.
I was specific in the ad that no less than $1500 would purchase it. The previous month someone took one look at it and offered me $3500 and I told him that no one had enough money to buy that bike from me. Keep in mind gas was $4 a gallon then and scooters were worth their weight in gold in metro areas. 2 weeks later the bottom dropped out of my life and I needed money to move more than I needed the bike.
Perhaps you emailed me, didn't matter. A vet fresh home from the Iraq war took one glance at the ad and drove up from Atlanta with 15 crispy $100 bills in his hand. He didn't even want to test ride it, he just wanted help loading it into the back of his SUV. I had my stuff packed that night.
The simple fact is that if your first thought is "What will it take to make this what I want it to be?" then it's not what you want.
I've owned 19 vehicles. They don't mean anything, I change them like underwear. When I sold that one I cried. I wish I had it back.