It is a given that Vespa enthusiasts love their respective scooters. That is to be expected. I’ve even heard of stories from riding buddies with significant others getting jealous with the attention they’re giving their beloved steeds. There’s even a tale going around where the wife threatened the husband to sleep in the garage since he loves his Vespa more anyway. bwahaha!
May the clip below remind us to give the one we truly love the attention she deserves, especially in a day like today.
Director: Massimo Sbaraccani
Editor: Massimo Sbaraccani
Art director: Sara Scamarcia
Fastest Vespa ever zooms into maxi scooter category with timeless Italian style and craftsmanship
[PRESS RELEASE] NEW YORK, January 16, 2009 – Italian manufacturer Piaggio, renowned for revolutionary ideas in personal transportation, announces the U.S. debut of
the 2009 Vespa GTS 300 Super, the newest evolution of its best-selling mid-size scooter, the GTS 250. Sporting a new high-displacement engine and a collection of racing-inspired components and exterior treatments that complement its high-performance character, the GTS 300 Super has been designed to set pulse points pounding whether in motion or at rest.
As the fastest Vespa in the company’s U.S. product portfolio, the new GTS 300 Super is always ready to stir up excitement. New styling elements that signal its sporty intentions include an eye-catching side grille on the rear engine panel, two-tone alloy wheel rims, a racing red suspension cover on the front spring and a black-rimmed headlight. A new front shield features a stylish chrome air intake, reinforcing its sporty personality and stylish stance.
“The GTS 300 Super doesn’t just stand out in the crowd – it gets you out of the crowd,” says Paolo Timoni, President and CEO of Piaggio Group Americas. “Whether you need to accelerate away from traffic or take advantage of parking spaces that others only dream about fitting in, the GTS 300 Super does it with Vespa’s unique mix of Italian attitude and style.”
Vespas have always been the preferred scooters for those who want to send a message about the importance of personal choice, freedom and authenticity. The company has produced over 17 million scooters since its debut in 1946 and the brand has been immortalized by artists and individualists through the decades. Read the rest of this entry ?
Since October of last year, the local Vespa community has been abuzz of the impending arrival of the adidas X Vespa collection.
True to it’s promise of the collection’s availability around the world beginning January 2009 , word came out in this Vespinoy thread that the sneakers are already available in the Adidas Originals store in Trinoma.
When I was there two days ago for a meeting, I made it a point to visit the store to see the ‘new arrivals’ for myself. Here’s what I’ve found.
These are the only four designs available so far. The choices is not as varied as those shown here, but its a start. Since the design of the black model at bottom is hardly visible, I took another pic up-close using my cam phone. Here it is. Read the rest of this entry ?
Below is Stoplight.TV’s coverage of Vespa Attack 4 held November of last year. Aside from showing the various colorful scooters on display, the segment also features Dominic Ochoa’s interview of the different club presidents — me for Vespa Club, Edgen Dy-Liacco of Scoot66 and Randy Villa who’s the current VP of EuroScoot.
This episode was first aired last Jan. 04, 2009. Special thanks to Eggay Quesada and DJ Matt Montoya for the coverage. Watch it here:
Top Gear is a British television series about motor vehicles, primarily cars. It is presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. The show is famous for its fantastic visuals and humorous commentaries by the program’s hosts. It also gave rise to the popular character of The Stig(he’s even got a fanbase in Facebbok!) the show’s anonymous and silent test driver.
Last December 28, 2008, Top Gear presented an epic episode where the three program host were presented a challenge which took them to Vietnam and required them to travel 1000 miles from Ho Chí Minh City (Saigon) to to Ha Long City (near Hanoi) in a span of eight days. That’s practically from the bottom to the northern tip of Vietnam!
Each were handed a shoebox with 15 million Vietnamese dongs so they could buy a vehicle of their choice to use for the challenge. But they soon realize that the ‘enormous’ amount couldn’t afford them a car so they settled for something cheaper.
Hammond bought a Russian-built 125cc two-stroke Minsk; May a 50cc four-stroke Honda Cub (a bike very common in Vietnam and ranked No. 1 among the World’s 10 Greatest Ever motorbikes); and Clarkson, who claimed to have never ridden before and knew little about motorbikes, purchased a green vintage Piaggio Vespa. It should be noted that Clarkson despised motorcycles. Bikers might find his tounge-and-cheek humor a bit condescending, but personally, I find his Brit humor amusing. In the scene when they were buying crash helmets, he quipped: “The reason why crash helmets are small is because people who wear them haven’t got a brain. Otherwise they’d have a car.”
Here’s the first part of that epic episode.
Will the vintage Vespa finish the challenge? Those who hate Jeremy Clarkson’s guts for “insulting” two-wheel riders may find a little satisfaction towards the end of the episode.
Just last Tuesday, Gruppo Piaggio unveiled a prototype of a new sidecar design specially made for the modern Vespa line — particularly the GTV and GT models.
Nothing to do with Vespas but I figured I’d do some 80’s Pinoy kids a favor by posting this on the internet.
The ad below brings a lot of memories. Shot in Liverpool, England, I was in high school in the late ’80s when this popular Coke ad was shown locally. I’ve been looking for this in YouTube for a years but no luck. I saw the other international versions but not the one shown here in the Philippines. When I saw most of the comments in those clips, a lot of people are also looking for the same local version. Someone even “threatened” that if the Coca-Cola peeps don’t upload the video soon, he’s gonna switch to Pepsi! hahaha!
When I saw this Coke ad again, I remembered how big a crush I had with Lilet back then. hahaha! I would have been proud kung naging gf ko sya that time. Alam ko sa St. Jo sya nag-high school eh. Kaso mahigpit daw yung nanay kaya di na ako nanligaw. KAPAL! STALKLER! bwahaha!
Anyway, here’s the TVC.
Syempre, may kasamang lyrics:
I am the future of the world
I am the hope of my nation
I am tomorrow’s people
I am the new inspiration
And we’ve got a song to sing to you
We’ve got a message to bring to you
Please let there be, for you and for me, a tomorrow (tomorrow)
If we all can agree there’ll be sweet harmony tomorrow (tomorrow)
And we all will be there, Coca-Cola to share
Feeling so real and so true
Promise us tomorrow
And we’ll build a better world for you
There are a number of song about riding a Vespa, but my favorite, hands down, is LùnaPop’s (link auto-translated to English) “50 Special” which they released back in 1999. I call it “The anthem for Vespa riders!“
The song is in Italian but it has gotten so popular back then that the band made another version in Spanish. I’ve also read before that they later made an English version for the UK market but I wasn’t able to hear that one. That was the case until I stumbled upon this…
The verses sounded weird for me. The English lines seem forced to fit the melody, and in some instances, it felt like words didn’t even rhyme. But the refrain sounds alright to me.
This one’s the actual episode I was talking about in this post: “This blogger will guest on TV!” Special thanks to Vexel9 for giving me a DVD copy.
I have to warn you though that this video may take forever to load. The files are so large that youtube won’t even accept them for uploading! hehehehe I don’t know how to make the size of the videos smaller. Instead, I divided our interview into two parts.
In the coming days, I’ll try to make some follow-up posts related to items I have posted previously. These have been in my to-do list since forever and I figured I might as well get ‘em over with.
The music video below is related to the “Vespeeps join a music video shoot!” which I posted sometime in March 2007. It’s the song “To The…” by Juan Pablo Dream and directed by Jon “Sponky” Villarin.
Was finally able to track this down via youtube only recently and I imported it in my multiply page. Vespas, Beetles and Combis abound in the 2nd half of this music video! Too bad the audio of this particular clip is not in-sync with the video. Well, better than nothing!
I saw Pyke & me appear for a split second! bwahaha
For a behind-the-scene account regarding this shoot, you may re-vist this post.
