Rare as Hen’s Teeth #3

Cars Bikes

This is news to us. We thought that the only vehicles to carry the Vespa moniker were the skirted step-throughs that gave them their global fame.

But, it seems that at the end of the 1950s and into the early sixties a French licensee built a microcar carryng the Vespa badge based on Piaggio’s original designs.

It’s a cute kind of design that manages to steer clear of the pitfalls of the washing machine style of budget microcars like the Trabant – and the contemporary city car lite that is the Tata Nano.

There can’t be many of these fifty year old pocket rockets left. But one man in America’s Pacific Northwest certainly seemed to be having fun in a VW engined version.

Give us one of these little classics over Smart any day.

Images via Classic Rallies …



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