Vespa vs Bonneville

"This is a jewel," my buddy said to me, after we stopped to stretch our legs on the way in to Key West. We swapped machines and he took off on the Bonneville this time and I plunked myself down on the GTS. Then, a dozen miles further down the road we stopped alongside the Key West "International" Airport, and took in the sea and the sun and the motorcycles we had just parked. "Ah yes," he said. "The Bonneville, what a machine..."

I am in limbo just now, holding both the outgoing GTS and the incoming Bonneville and I wonder how to value each or either. In a more ideal world, perhaps a world of air conditioned garages and time and space to ride more than one machine at a time one could consider keeping both, but in my life, in my time/space continuum there is room for one just one machine. Besides the wife insists. We have bills to pay, bills I'd rather ignore.

The Vespa, there is no doubt, has come a long way over the past 60 years. The GTS is frequently described as half a motorcycle, thanks to its top speed, near 80 mph, and its ability to accelerate there relatively fast, fast enough to force car drivers to have to try very very hard if they want to get ahead. It costs as much as a motorcycle, $6200 out the door in Miami. It carries lots of rational luggage spaces, in front, in the middle and in the back, it holds the road well, it accelerates smoothly and it looks a million dollars.

The seating is as comfortable as anything on two wheels and the ample floorboards not only offer excellent weather protection to the feet and legs, but they also allow the rider to move around and assume different stances to relieve any physical strain from sitting in one position.

The shortcomings of the Vespa as a distance rider are mostly in the mind, and in a town where scooters are popular and small, like Key West, it is, paradoxically, inconceivable that a man could use a motor scooter as a daily rider on the Highway. It gets tedious justifying an 80mph/70mpg Vespa as something more than "just an urban scooter." A 250cc Vespa GTS is neither fish nor fowl, it is a scooter but it rides like a motorcycle. Its easy to ride but presents itself as a machine for neophytes, for people who have never challenged themselves with a motorcycling stick shift; the Vespa is for people who do not dare to ride the "real thing." I remember an entry in the Scooter in the Sticks blog discussing a television icon on a motorcycle who renders visual the notion of motorcycling freedom by taking to the beach (Ocean Beach in San Francisco I rather think) and riding his grossly uncomfortable chopper with ape hangars in his hands and a wool watch cap on his head. The question posed was, roughly, can one aspire to be all that the television program implied, if one rides a Vespa? It's a good question, but the fact that it is posed, and unanswerable, leaves the Vespa in limbo.

The Triumph Bonneville is the 1960s icon of macho everything, it leaves no question unanswered if you want to wear a watch cap (in a no-helmet-law state like Florida) and be a real man. However the New Bonneville gets its grunt from an extra 200cc's on the original 650 (the original original frightened the pants off wannabe motorcyclists with just 500cc's) and it behaves impeccably from the time it starts to the time it sits cooling and ticking under the house after the ride.The Bonnie is a powerful motorcycle also capable of lumping along much more slowly without hesitation or hiccough, and with modest saddlebags and a modest top case it runs to and from work with the greatest of ease. In a nod to its heritage it uses a manual fuel tap and a manual choke (fuel injection is on the horizon) and in standard form it is not much louder than the Vespa. Chain maintenance is easier than I expected with my funny little Loobman bottle and so far the tubed tires haven't had a flat so I can't bitch about how hard a roadside temporary repair is on these "old fashioned" tubes. I wish it came with a tachometer but will be a later, $400, addition. For $7700 out the door its a nice all round motorcycle. Where it wins out over the Vespa, in my opinion is in the reduced overall maintenance schedule. The vespa needs its drive belt changed every 6,000 miles and the rear tire every 4,000 if you're lucky and it lasts that long. For someone who rides a thousand or more miles a month "Vespanomics" doesn't compute.

In the image department it is everything a rider from the 1970s could wish for. I love the rear suspension, two separate springs bolted to an obvious frame- a look that has gone out of style on modern machines. I look at the big round headlight, all 7 inches of it, and it makes me feel like I have gone back to the glories of years past. The fuel tank is rounded too as a fuel tank should be, and sits astride a "proper" frame, the carburettors sit modestly behind the air cooled engine fins doing their jobs without pumps or chips or electrons. It gives me the best of modern motorcycling function along with the visual cues that remind me where I have come from in terms of motorcycling. It satisfies. All this and it holds the road just fine, not like a modern race bike but in every way that counts for a street rider. Its a bonus for me that no one questions my choice of wheels when I putt up behind a sleepy cager led by that big headlamp on top of those huge wheels and powered by that ugly black lump of metal that clearly takes no prisoners. No explanation, no justification is needed as I slide on by, epitomizing the freedom of the open road. This is what the Intrepid Commuter on his blog calls a shifter, as opposed to a scooter. In my case it shifts traffic right out of the way.

And a lot of the pleasure of the Bonnie is image of course. A younger version of myself would ride the Street Triple by Triumph, 675ccs "only" but producing 109 horsepower to the Bonneville's 66hp (or the Vespa's 22hp). If I were 20 right now that's what I would ride. If form follows function this has to be a most superbly functional machine and it has a style that allows one to see past the ugly headlamps and the exposed "plumber's nightmare" of engine piping (more famously said of Vincents of yore) . Its purposeful, if you like an agrressive angular look. Obviously I don't.

Or if I were a long distance traveler I might have spent twice the money and bought a 1050cc Triumph Sprint with factory supplied hard travel bags.But I don't need the horsepower, I don't need the crouch and I am not yet ready for the modern look. I like my modern classic, be it a scooter or a shifter.

I have the Bonnie, and though I shall eventually miss the Vespa when its sold, I ride a motorcycle that not only fills the visual cues a middle aged man looks for in his ride, it justifies his self image as an accomplished rider, and demands enough competence to make it an object of justifiable pride.

"You know," my childhood friend said as he lit up a cigarette on the side of the road. "This thing rides just as easily as a scooter." "Thats right" I replied, remembering once again how he and I grew up together, riding together. Nowadays he rides a massive BMW 1200 that easily hauls him and his wife up the autostrada.

"This is the best of all worlds," he said, admiring the Bonneville. Who am I to disagree?