These days the Vespa is a top choice amongst Bangkok’s more discerning motorbike enthusiasts due to its elegant Italian design and dolce vita lifestyle image.
You can find these dashing bohemians – the self-styled contemporary mods of Thailand – whizzing between cafes in fashionable neighborhoods of the Big Mango.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Vespa models landed in the kingdom over 40 years ago and were first adopted by Thai-Chinese denizens in the commercial hive of Bangkok’s Chinatown for their indestructible nature and workhorse engines.
The design of the Vespa might hold a retro-cool appeal today, but the fact that it has changed so little in over half a century is a testament to its extreme innovation at the time. It was the first motor scooter to use a monocoque frame and a covered engine so dust and particles couldn’t get in, a problem which plagued other bikes.
To find out why many fall so madly in love with these bikes, I headed down to chaotic Chinatown, a far cry from the romantic cobblestone streets of Rome.
My first stop was Super Scooter shop, a fixture in Yaowarat’s Vespa scene easily identified by the 15 Italian scooters lined up in front.
Pinid Savetnawin has been obsessed with motor scooters since he was a child and now makes his living managing a shop that trades in all things Vespa. When I arrived, he was crouching amongst greasy wrenches and engine panels on a corner of Soi Mongkorn barking out instructions to a young mechanic. At first, he was a man of few words.
“If you own a Vespa you’ll quickly figure out why people all around the world love it,” was the answer he kept returning to.
But after some time he eventually opened up.
“The sound of the motor is like a bee,” he mused. “It’s strong but beautiful. It’s unique and has a colorful history.” That still didn’t answer what I wanted to know most: Why are there so many Vespas in this neighborhood and what makes people love them so much?
Pinid slowly divulged more information on the Vespa’s local acclaim. “The Thai-Chinese are a people of tradition. They work hard and value things that don’t break easily. Most of the older Vespas that come into my shop are brought in by younger people because their grandparents handed it down to their parents, who in turn gave it to them.”
After some serious prodding I finally got the technical answer I was looking for: “The engine is low to the ground and it’s connected directly to the back wheel. They never break and the simplicity of the two-stroke engine is what allows people to load these up with all their stuff and bring it around.”
He went on to explain in detail why they’re so good for carting around goods.
On a normal motorbike the engine and transmission sits in the middle of the bike, and the motor drives the rear wheel by delivering power to a chain hooked up to a cog on the rear wheel. This puts the weight under the rider’s feet for easy maneuverability. The more moving parts there are in the transmission, the more power and torque is lost. This is called drivetrain power loss, and regular motorbikes suffer quite a bit from this problem.
Vespas, on the other hand, suffer minimal power loss because they don’t use a chain to drive the rear wheel – the rear wheel is actually attached to a transmission shaft directly connected to the engine. This design puts the engine behind the rider and directly on the back wheel. Putting the engine atop the rear wheel does create unequal weight distribution and makes the bike less nimble, but what it also allows for is tons of weight to be loaded on the back. The reason you see Vespas buzzing around with what looks like the contents of a small house strapped to the back is because of this unique design, which allows the bike to remain balanced even with a heavy load in the rear. Try loading up a Honda Click in the same way and you’ll wobble right off the road. This is the main reason why the inhabitants of Chinatown use these bikes to deliver everything from sacks full of heavy rice to textile rolls.
So why does Khun Pinid love Vespa?
“I think I love my Vespa because they make the road more colorful and fun,” he reflected.
And what about the design draws you in?
“Well I think anything from Europe never really goes out of style, it’s always in trend,” he explained. “I love to look at European shapes, and I love how people customize them.”
Pinid is an old hand in the Vespa world. But would someone younger share the same sentiments as the experienced shop owner? I made my way down to the Vintage Vespa Thai Museum near the mighty Chao Phraya River. Vintage Vespa specializes in restorations of hard-to-find, vintage models – oddly they never seem up for sale, instead finding a spot to sit in the shop for scooter enthusiasts to ogle.
It’s at the museum that the younger scooter-loving crowd hangs out and meets up to go on rides. When I explained that my mission was to find out why Vespas are so beloved, I was met with a series of wildly varying opinions. One rider said that he thought celebrities like Mario Maurer made them popular, but another was quick to point out that they’ve been a cultural icon long before Mario started wooing teenage girls.
After the crew finished exchanging glances the clearest and most heartfelt reasoning was shared.
“The reason they’re cool is because of the people in the community,” one of the guys explained. “It’s not just the bike that’s cool, it’s the people who own the bikes. The bike is the common ground that we all have. I think the reason we adore the brand is because it stands for everything we stand for. We’re easy, we’re simple and we also love to have fun and chill. The Vespa is perfect for just cruising around on, and it never breaks.”
He went over and kick-started his baby, and a poppy two-stroke note erupted from the seafoam green Vespa.
He revved it to a purr and zipped off into Chinatown traffic.
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Watch the Coconuts TV video “A Vespa love triangle from the streets of Bangkok” below!
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