The GT200 arrives home!

 

Today I rode the Vespa home after being phoned yesterday to say that it was all fettled and serviced and ready to become mine.

So I had a most enjoyable ride, on a beautiful clear, calm sunny end-of-winter's day, taking the long way home. It was a delightful experience and I've fallen for this little Italian lady in a big way.

Tomorrow I will take some photos and I s'pose I'll have to choose an appropriate name for her.
"Sophia" is too obvious, as is "Audrey" (Hepburn, from the classic movie, "Roman Holiday").
So I was thinking perhaps "Gina" (Lollobrigida - another curvaceous Italian from my era).....

She actually rode a scooter (a Lambretta, not a Vespa...but that doesn't matter, it was Italian) as a pillion passenger behind Rock Hudson in the 1961 movie, "Come September"........

 

That's her, below....on the right, peering over Rock's shoulder. (That's Bobby Darin and wife Sandra Dee on the left.)

But no......the more I thought about it the more I just wanted a female name to dovetail nicely with the word "Vespa", so maybe it should start with a 'V'.

"Virginia Vespa"? No....doesn't roll off the tongue, really.

"Violet", no. "Valerie", no.

I ran through all the girls names beginning with 'V' that I could think of and came up with nothing that I liked.

So "Gina" it is!

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These photos below were taken today - Sunday 29th. August - after I had ridden 86 kilometres for no reason other than to ride for an hour or so. It was a sparkling morning - the final couple of days of winter (officially, that is) - and the two shots below were taken atop Red Hill, where I paused for a coffee which didn't eventuate because the cafe doesn't open until 11:00 AM.

Other than that, it was a perfect morning and Gina Vespabrigida performed wonderfully.

(Click for much larger images)

I've always liked Vespa scooters......

........so I finally bought one!

For some months I've been pondering the purchase of a Vespa. It had to be the traditional shape but I wanted it in a modern, automatic "twist-'n'-go" configuration, not one of the earlier geared models.

I umm-ed and ahh-ed and did nothing about it other than a lot of research and looking and a couple of test rides until I decided to sell the Yamaha SRV250 Renaissa on which I had the "off" back at the beginning of April (is it really that long ago? Wow!).

I never felt fully comfortable on that little bike after my accident so it was advertised on eBay a few weeks back and a nice chap from down the coast bought it - he'd been looking for one for a while.

So over the past fortnight I've been deliberating about getting a Vespa, something not less than 150cc in capacity.

Purchase price + on-road costs meant that my budget (taking into account the money from the sale of the Renaissa) would not extend to a new model; a Vespa LX150ie is over $7,000 on the road.

I looked at several ads for "pre-owned" 150cc units (The ET4 150) and they were more in my price range - from $3,500 to $4,500.  They looked quite promising...........until this morning (said in the fashion of Jeremy Clarkson).

I ventured over to Motorini, in the Woden suburb of Phillip, and had a chat with the proprietor, Nico Wright, about a second-hand Vespa.

Lo! and Behold!.......there at the back of his workshop (actually parked outside) was a GT200 with 17,000 kms on it that had recently been traded for a new GTS300. (The previous owner had ridden it over from Adelaide, incidentally).

The GT200 is equipped with the small windscreen, a top-box, heated handgrips and was undergoing maintenance and replacement of the head gasket. To round it out it is finished in the not-often-seen Portofino Green livery.

Price is within my scope so I have committed to buy and would expect to add it to the stable within the next fortnight.