Ever wondered where the new generation of scooter nutter will come from? That’s something which is often discussed.
People want their scene to carry on but equally, they don’t want it changed. As every new generation arrives they do make changes. The world does not stand still.
Who needs porn?
I can happily report that in Italy at least, the enthusiasm for 2-strokes is in safe hands. There, legislation still permits access to a 50cc scooter from 14 years old, or if you want to stay drier, a 50cc Piaggio Ape. As such the same obsession with tuning and performance for 2-strokes is bred very young; whether it’s karts, minimoto, Vespas, motocross, automatic scooters or Ape 3-wheelers. To Italian youths, anything with wheels and a 2-stroke engine is better than Fake Taxi.
Valle Del Rubicone scooter/Ape club, mostly in their 20s, and lead by Eddi Sacchetti, assembled a really quite ambitious event in an industrial area near Longiano in Emilia Romagna. It was advertised as strictly 2-stroke, but that’s quite hard to enforce given that some of the performing vehicles were 4-stroke.
For the universally popular entry fee of bugger all, you got to see the following:
- Vespa and automatic scooter 150-metre drag racing
- Scooter and Ape custom show
- Ape Proto racing displays
- Kart racing
- 2-stroke motorcycle stunt show
- Drift cars
- Street food and bar
- Noisy engine competition
- Burnout competition
- Scooter gymkhana
Scooter Sprinting
The event was part of a series of sprint races organised by Zirri. The course is 150 metres, just under 1/10 of a mile. A decent time for a scooter is 7 seconds. The fast boys cover the distance in a little over 6 seconds.
Too dangerous?
I met Alessandro from BFA whose rider – Alex ‘Lepre’ – set a blistering time of 6.19 seconds in the morning on his 150cc GP category Vespa, before declaring the track a bit too dangerous to carry on with. The problems being that the trading estate tarmac was a bit bumpy and the braking area very short, terminating in a kerb and a pavement. Bear in mind that quick scooters are exiting the 150-metre mark at over 130km/h (80+mph) and many of them were running drum brakes in order to minimise frictional losses that you get with brake discs.
BFA GP 150
What remained then was a long wait while the competition chipped away at the time. Eventually, it was surpassed by Sicilian rider Vincenzo Canale who recorded around 6.17 seconds, also with a BFA-engined GP class 150.
Eventually, Lepre’s fears proved valid when Quattrini M200 racer Tommy Baldoni failed to stop in time on his orange Vespa, hitting the kerb and fatally bending both the frame and forks of the Vespa. Luckily he escaped largely unharmed, but it reminded everyone that scooter sprinting can still be dangerous if it’s not taken seriously.
Ape Hangers
Ape vans (pronounced ‘ah-pay’ meaning bee, rather than a tail-less primate) are an institution in Italy. The engines are smallframe based so it’s now perfectly possible to apply the same tuning components and reach somewhere between 20 and 30hp. This is in a machine designed for 20mph with dubious brakes and one fewer than a sensible number of wheels for a car, and one too many for a bike.
Spoiler alert
If you are an Italian teenager, what you then need to do is ‘slam’ it to the floor, fit extra-wide rear wheels, add a sound system and customise the bodywork. Oh and add a spoiler behind the cab. No custom Ape is complete without a spoiler. I absolutely love seeing these buzzing (sic) around; particularly as they hold the traffic up much less than standard ones.
If all that still sounds too sensible, what you need to do is chop the back off your Ape and replace the Vespa-derived motor with a 100+hp 4-stroke motorcycle engine. These are Ape Proto machines that were on display drifting around the ‘arena’ area.
The drivers quickly answered some of my questions about Apes:
- Yes, you can ride them on 2 wheels if you modify the differential
- Yes, if you get it wrong, even with a massively extended rear axle, they will still tip over
VIDEO: See the event from all angles
Random Noise Generators
The program was so full that there was never a shortage of things to see. While the sprinting was on the Casa Performance team entered the burn-out competition with their SSR 265 LC race scooter. In 5th gear it pretty quickly turned a perfectly good tyre into granular format with added threads.
If you don’t understand the fun of needless tyre torture then this was not your place. The Ape Protos and Drift cars all ripped rubber at a ridiculous rate.
GALLERY: Italian 2-stroke fun
Noisy engine competition
Most pointless of all however is another Italian speciality: the noisy engine competition. This is a classic crowd-pleaser (?) from the Italian MotoGPs in Mugello. Forget people riding around at 3 am on a smallframe Vespa with a broken exhaust. They don’t even register on the dB meter. No, here people mount engines to trolleys and fit megaphone exhausts just to make noise. There’s an example at the end of the video.
If you don’t find that funny then this event is not for you. It is for younger people who will, hopefully, one day be the next generation of scooter nutter and will look back on these events with rose-tinted specs just like we do on our first scooter rallies.
There are also some good garden centres nearby though, if that’s what you prefer. Plenty of parking. Off you toddle.
