Long term update Vespa Et4 150 - Honda Today 50 This is a boring story. That’s bad for a magazine, but it’s great news for scooter riders
Words by JEREMY BOWDLER Long-term vehicle tests are supposed to be all about what went wrong. How we intrepid motoring journalists thrashed a vehicle unmercifully, subjecting it to uses far above and beyond its call of duty all the time while ignoring such normal observances like tyre pressures, let alone routine maintenance and all in the name of journalistic integrity.
Well we did all that with our long term Vespa ET4 150 and Honda Today 50, and do you now what? Nothing went wrong. Well, almost nothing, but I’ll get to that later.
The idea was simple, as all good ideas are. We were thrown the keys to two scooters and we were supposed to chart their progress over the days, weeks and months they were in our tender loving care. Or that’s what the distributors believed. Sorry guys. It didn’t quite work out.
We couldn’t find anything to write about. Turn the key, press the button, ride to work, turn the key. Turn the key, press the button, ride home again, turn the key. And so ad infinitum. Nothing to report.
We had grand plans about logging detailed fuel economy and bought little notebooks to be kept in the storage compartments to be dutifully filled in each fuel stop. But after five weeks of commuting on the Honda Today 50, it required the grand total of $4.25 in fuel and the idea seemed to have lost its impact. That and the fact that after five weeks, no one knew where the damned little notebook had got to.
We thought about logging the trips each scooter did, to see if we could come up with weird and wonderful uses for a scooter, but each time we tried to overload either scooter with shopping bags or hardware from Bunnings, they coped so well and with such little fuss that that idea too seemed lame. Then the reports of people riding their scooters all around Australia began to filter through and we just felt embarrassed.
We did learn a few things, however. The bolt holding the exhaust pipe onto the Honda can vibrate loose. Shock, horror. A drop of Loctite fixed that. We also learned that Vespas don’t bounce. After an errant car had pushed one of our testers off the road, the metal skin body of the Vespa required panel beating, instead of panel replacement. That, unfortunately, is one of the prices you pay for that inimitable style.
In the end, nothing went wrong (bar those two items mentioned) and both scooters just kept on providing cheap, easy, enjoyable transport and because they kept on doing that, they were never parked long enough for any of us to check out the wear and tear.
The ET4 did achieve one milestone while in our care. It enticed my pillion in a million back onto the back seat for the first time in more than six years. About half a squillion kilometres on the back of a variety of increasingly uncomfortable motorcycles and two kids curtailed our two-up wind in the hair adventures until a compliant babysitter and the ET4 persuaded her otherwise.
And, for the record, after a browse around the markets and a pleasant lunch, the Vespa transported both of us, as well as the Japanese tea set and the American Woman’s Cookbook, back home in fine style. And you can’t say fairer than that.
Thanks to Honda for the use of the Honda Today 50 and to PS Imports for the Vespa ET4.
As published in TW SCOOTER MAGAZINE - 15/11/2004
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