Some background data

In 1979 I stopped racing in the Italian Sidecar Championship. Afterwards, I decided to start a business which gave me the possibility to remain in the world of motorcycles.

I heard from a friend of mine that a store near the town of Grosseto, which was closed about 20 years ago, was on sale. I knew that the owner of this store was a Piaggio concessionaire. So we negotiated the price and finally, I bought the store. When the heirs of this shop pulled up the shutter to show me all the goods inside , I was amazed because I realized that in this place time stopped. The owner’s nephews told me that the store was left as it was , that’s to say, when VAT was introduced. Here and there you could see cases full of Vespa spare parts . In the corner of the store there were four Vespa 125 dated 1948 together with a Vespa Sport which later I found out that it was a “six days ” model dated 1968. It was all covered with dust and scratches , probably because it had been moved several times. Anyway, it seemed new. So my passion for the historic Vespa scooters and for their restoration began. At that time, during the day I worked with my father in the garage where we repaired gardening machines. At night I enjoyed my self restoring all the old Vespa which I had already collected.

Usually, it happens that we help our friends to restore motorcycles or Vespa scooters just to pass the time . Finally, this hobby changes into a real profession.
From 1989 restoration has become my only job . So now , thanks to all my experience, I can admit
I Am a restorer . Besides, I work for the Piaggio as a consultant. This has given me the opportunity to work on “unique models” and to improve the knowledge of this special motor scooters which I am sure many people would envy.

Among the original models which I restored for the Piaggio Museum , there is a funny Vespa realized for the movie “ Dick Smart agente 2007” . This motor scooter, thanks to special devices, can travel on the road, fly as an airplane or travel underwater as a submarine . As for the market of Vespa collecting , we can note that in the past, especially in 1979 when I started collecting Vespa scooters, nobody was very fond of them. That’s why they were very cheap, but today they are quite expensive. At the moment, the Vespa scooters in great demand are the : 98 model, especially the first produced or the “six days” sport and the “U” model of 1953. Their price can be over 10 thousand euro. The Vespa scooters in great demand of the 60’s are the 90 and 50 Super Sprint . The latter is very rare since it was produced for the foreign market only.

As regards the spare parts, the “white fly” is no doubt the switch of the Vespa 98. There are some collectors who could spend a fortune to get it. Besides, it is very difficult to find the fuel tap of the first models, the carrier and the handlebar of the Vespa Super Sprint. As for the real restoration, it is very hard to work on a Vespa 98 which has aluminium bodyworks. These were often modified in order to assemble the rear suspension. There’s no problem to do some mechanical works on this Vespa scooter, because the spare parts of the oldest models are very easy to find.