When I heard I was going to test-drive a Vespa, a grainy image bloomed in my mind of a woman with close-cropped hair and a man in a grey suit, buzzing along cobblestoned city streets on a scooter.
Though I didn’t know it at the time, this image is straight from Roman Holiday, a 1953 film starting Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Other than the couple riding a Vespa, I can’t tell you a thing about that movie, which is older than my mum.
When Vespa sent their man Jeff Taylor to pick me up at the Mail & Guardian‘s Rosebank office, I was a bit anxious because I’d been on a motorbike once years ago and I still count that experience as the most terrifying two minutes of my life. But Taylor reassured me that this would be nothing like that. “The difference between a Vespa and a superbike is about 120km an hour,” he said.
After resigning myself to hat-hair after strapping on the helmet, I grabbed hold of the metal rail behind the seat and hung on for dear life as we weaved through morning traffic on Jan Smuts Avenue.
But then, somewhere before Fourways, I forgot my fears.
With the wind on my face and the sun on my back, the ball of tension in my stomach unwound. I started noticing the trees along the way, the smell of cut grass and dry soil. And I started to feel an almost uncontrollable urge to wrap my arms around the total stranger in front of me and lean my head against his back. This is either a testament to Roman Holiday or to what Vespa South Africa’s MD Andy Reid calls “the romance of Vespa”. He uses “romance” as a generic term for fun, energy and a “live-life attitude”.
After a quick tutorial about the controls (squeeze this handle to accelerate and that one to brake) and a zip around Vespa’s backlot, I can confirm that Vespa’s got plenty of live-life attitude. It took but a few minutes of experimentation to lose my fear of dropping the bike and then I was off.
There’s a certain genteel charm about riding a Vespa, an element of fun and freedom you no longer get from driving a car. As I passed delivery trucks and bakkies on the back roads at the Design Quarter, I could almost imagine myself riding through leafy Parkhurst on a Sunday morning in search of a roadside café, the husband behind me with his arms wrapped around my waist.
Vespa isn’t just about trying to capture La Dolce Vita; it is both stylish and practical. In the United Kingdom, more people are switching to scooters to get around congestion taxes and high petrol prices. Jamie Oliver, who buzzes from patisserie to butchery on a Vespa in search of fresh ingredients, is a prime example.
But just because the Vespa’s trendy in the UK doesn’t mean it’ll be the next big thing here. The market is just too different. Traditional South African car owners are not switching over entirely to Vespa. Instead, they’re using it as an additional vehicle to beat traffic or petrol prices.
In this country, Vespa isn’t competing against cars; it’s competing against a jetski, a quad bike or a trip to Mauritius.
Although banking standards now make it harder to acquire finance for a car, financing a Vespa is easy. According to Reid, half the Vespas sold in South Africa are paid for in cash or by credit card. The company saw two major hikes in public interest last year. The first was after rolling blackouts began, an event that caused major congestion on the roads. The second was after the petrol price spiked.
Which raises the question: if you’re trying to beat traffic and save on petrol, why not buy some other, cheaper brand of scooter? Seated on a pastel blue Vespa with its retro mirrors and elegant lines, that would be like asking if a Mercedes-Benz has anything in common with a Tata.
The Vespa LX150 I tested costs R52 950. It has a fuel consumption of 35km/l at 70kph and comes with a standard one-year, unlimited kilometre warranty. For roadside assistance, Vespa runs a callout service, which operates during office hours in the greater Gauteng area at a fee of R450 per callout. Alternatively, drivers can subscribe to AA, which also caters for bikes.