Scooter Review

Piaggio MP3 250

Can adding an extra wheel make riding better?

Words by JEREMY BOWDLER, photography by LOU MARTIN

It wasn’t until I saw an MP3 in action that I really got the concept. I was sitting at a café in Navigli in Milan, on the outside of a bend in a cobbled road when I heard the scooter approaching flat out. The rider pitched the MP3 into the corner, completely unconcerned by the lack of traction on the cobblestone surface and I watched as the front wheels tracked up and down, maintaining grip at full lean as the rider chatted unconcernedly on his telefonino. That’s when I suddenly understood the MP3.

My previous encounter had been a 10-minute spin around Sydney’s White Bay as I desperately tried to find roundabouts to test that radical front end. After that epiphany in Milan, I was keen to get back to Sydney to pick up my long-term tester.

That was a week ago and I’ve been trying to crash the little bastard ever since. Completely without success. Intellectually, I understand that you probably could tip it if you picked up one of the front wheels mid-corner, or if you lost the back end fast enough but, in practice, it feels uncrashable. Even a three-wheel lock-up when a car backed straight into my path didn’t faze the trike. Though the MP3 certainly fazes the other traffic.

Drivers and pedestrians point, wave, stare and give the thumbs up. And other riders? Well, when you cruise up next to them at the lights, lock the steering and stop, they look for a minute and then double take at the fact that you don’t have to put your foot down. Trick.

And the MP3 certainly is. At first it feels like a normal bike with a slightly flat front tyre, but slightly different still. Most of that feel comes from the extra weight of the front end but, once under way, you don’t really notice anything odd. Hitting an apex takes a bit of practice, as does trusting the front end not to put a tyre wrong. But, as the hours turned into days, I began to push harder. Finding potholes, steel plates, overbanding and any other imperfections became a crusade in commuting.

You can go into a corner way hot, knowing the front won’t tuck. At major lean angles and suspension loading, you can feel the springs bind and the tyres begin to walk very slightly, especially over bumps, but again only very slightly and at a pace and lean angle that’d have you pulling your wallet out for panel damage on anything else. It’s just mental.

Of course, you can’t have your cake and eat it too and the MP3 is no different. It’s heavier than the X8 250 the bodywork is based on and that means fuel economy will suffer (it’ll also suffer because you can ride the MP3 harder all the time everywhere). It also means the MP3 is more sluggish and harder to get off the line, say, to beat other traffic away from the lights. This raises another interesting point of difference.

Where, with other scooters, you can hold the rear brake on while you twist the throttle to get the centrifugal clutch to engage, the lefthand lever acting as a ‘clutch’ helping you to get off the line quickly, with the MP3, as soon as the revs reach a predetermined level (about 2600rpm according to the tacho) the lock holding the scooter upright is released electronically.

So, hold the rear brake on, twist the throttle and the scooter falls to the side while you fail to proceed. The only way to avoid this is to put your feet down when you stop as with a normal scooter, which removes some of the fun of never putting your feet on the ground.

In fact, the whole front-end locking mechanism takes a bit of getting used to. It is activated by a switch on the right-hand handlebar, but is only available at speeds below 16km/h and is not rpm dependent.

The automatic release, though, is rpm dependent. An orange light flashes on the dash when the lock becomes available, though looking for the light while still keeping an eye out for traffic in front of you is a little disconcerting at first. After a few days, you begin to sense when you are going slowly enough for the switch to work and there is a beep when the lock is activated. A trap for MP3 novices is simply to hold the switch on while you slow down. Won’t work. The switch has to be activated only once you are going slowly enough.

The other thing to be aware of is the delay between flicking the switch and the lock becoming activated. Since the caliper locks the steering at whatever position it is in at the time, it’s important to have the scooter as upright as possible when you press the button. This takes more practice than you’d think, due in part to a slight delay between the switch and the lock.

Having the scooter locked at anything too far off vertical will result in a sideways lurch once you twist the throttle. A week’s worth of commuting and it’d be second nature, but it’s something to bear in mind on your test ride around the block.

And you’re going to take that test ride, or you’d be mad. The MP3 has taken scootering (and motorcycling for that matter) to a new level. It’s quite possibly the single biggest advance since I’ve been

in the business, and that’s almost two decades. All of the normal hazardous road surfaces like steel plates, potholes, manhole covers, painted lines, sand, bumps, corrugations, ditches, etc, are swept under the wheels with abandon. Mid corner dip? Who cares? The bars will snap to the side once and you’ll carry on regardless. Lose the back end in the wet? A little opposite lock and you’re back on track. Panic braking? You’ve got twice the rubber up front.

It’s an amazing vehicle. But what is truly amazing is that Piaggio has got it so right so quickly. I’d like to see a better suspension system at the back end, because the front’s working so well shows up any flaws at the rear, which is less responsive. Some tweaking and fine-tuning should help here, as well as giving some more ground clearance (the removal of the centrestand will help here as it’s superfluous with the handbrake and the steering lock making it redundant).

The added weight, while making the front suspension work more efficiently, robs power and fuel economy – by how much will become apparent over the course of our long-term test – and is making me wonder how Aprilia got the same engine to feel so different in the Scarabeo 250ie and very keen to ride the 400cc version and the soon to arrive Gilera Fuoco 500 (and even more so the prototype Fuoco/Nexus...).

Even so, I haven’t had so much fun without any (or much) fear of ending up in hospital for... well, for ever. Piaggio Australia have given us one for long-term testing, so we’ll be reporting on the good and the bad. Open road manners, fuel economy and servicing costs are yet to be experienced but we’ll keep you posted. And yes, we want the drought to break, ‘cause in the wet, the MP3 will rock.

For a learner, nervously entering what seems like the absolute chaos of peak-hour traffic for the first time, the MP3 will encourage, reassure and protect. For an expert, looking to boost the adrenalin levels, the MP3 with inspire, inflame and enthuse. It’s going to revolutionise private transport. ✽

As published in TW SCOOTER MAGAZINE - 18/03/2008
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