Vespa World Days 2024 Pontedera | FEATURE

Mammoth Italian Vespa celebration couldn’t fail to impress, despite some organisational issues and the very British April weather.

I’ve been on some group rides in my time, but the Saturday tour from Pontedera to Peccioli blew my mind. Around 15,000 Vespas of every colour and style slowly cruising out of their birthplace and heading for a nearby hill-town under bright sunshine. At least 8,000 Vespisti paid and registered for the event, some of whom did other things on Saturday morning, but in addition, anyone else with a Vespa could join in the ride for free. There were estimated to be 20,000 Vespas in Pontedera for the weekend.

Huge parade

The parade took around an hour to pass a fixed point, with every Vespa rider feeling like the star of a very special show. They high-fived spectators lining the route and revelled in the attention of a film helicopter and many drones. 360 cameras held aloft all recorded a spectacle that is unlikely to be repeated again at such magnitude. Except perhaps for Rome 2026 for Vespa’s 80^th birthday party. 

Certainly, the VWD parade dwarfed even giant scooter events like the Isle of Wight scooter ride-out; but this is a mono-marque event.

Who goes to Vespa World Days?

It might seem odd that it’s taken until this point in my scootering career to attend a full Vespa World Days, but you can’t do everything. My priority up to now has always been to go where the ‘Scooterboy’ party is, not to join mono-marque national clubs.

I didn’t see one Lambretta on the ride, just a Royal Alloy ridden by a German who’d clearly forgotten his crash helmet. That’s rebellion with a very small ‘r’.

Culture rather than cult

The thing is, as far as the enthusiast Vespa world is concerned; the Mod and Scooterboy scenes are merely far-away fairy stories of oddball cults that sometimes used Vespa for transport. There were no Mod ‘lights and mirror’ Christmas tree scooters to be seen in Pontedera. 

Varied owners

As for the Scooterboy scene, yes there were Germans with leather jackets and top-and-bottom-rocker club patches, but VWD makes no effort to understand, let alone cater for the musical tastes of these people. As far as the event organisation is concerned, both Mod and Scooterboy fail to even register amongst the many, many different groups of people that have aligned themselves with Vespa during 78 years of history.

Souvenir hunters

The Vespisti that usually frequent EuroVespa or VWD events are very much a different breed. Many are more interested in taking a scooter to show-off with during little ride-outs than on riding massive distances to get there. They get their kicks from swapping ‘cog’ stickers and patches with other Vespa clubs from around the world.

No gala

Traditionally, the highlight of such events is a Gala dinner where each nation can conform to (or reject) national stereotypes. For the 90-odd Euro full ticket price, all the attendees expected some sort of gala dinner and a bag full of goodies including a T-shirt and some stickers and patches. These sorts of physical mementoes are exactly what the Vespisti expect to go home with; not a week-long hangover and a sexually transmitted disease, like you might get from a UK scooter rally.

Limited mods

The average attendee to VWD has a Vespa PX or GTS with very limited modification from standard: mostly bolt-on or stick-on. Tuned smallframes are a small but noisy minority, mostly piloted by young tearways, but also the odd lunatic Brit like Martin Lloyd who rode via Spain on his SS90 and was busy in the carpark fitting a new cylinder kit on Saturday.

Martin was lucky to find a Pinasco kit to buy as there were no parts retailers on site as such.

How do you get to VWD?

That all depends where you are coming from. Many Europeans, and even a few Brits (including SLUK’s own Shaun Hodgkin) rode there. Lots more from around Europe trailered, vanned or even filled lorries with their Vespas. Those from further afield like Indonesia, Mexico and the US had to make do with flying in and hiring Vespas; which never feels the same as bringing your own scooter.

For my part the journey was a great ride over two Apennine passes from Rimini on my Pinasco 251-engined LML. I’m fully aware of the irony of going to VWD on a ‘Vespa’ that has absolutely zero parts made in Pontedera, but the only other option was to take a Lambretta and get the kind of welcome usually reserved for people with leprosy. 

Certain internet foghorns, who can’t safely operate a Vernier caliper, have slagged off the Pinasco 251 motor before even riding it. For me the ‘super-T5’ was absolutely mint for enjoying hairpin after hairpin on the Passo dei Mandrioli, and totally trouble-free.

April showers

The same could not be said about the weather. We set off for Pontedera a day earlier than planned due to cold weather and rain that was arriving on Thursday – the first official day of the event. That turned out to be a very wise decision. Those who tried to cross the Alps and even the Apennine mountains that form Italy’s central ‘spine’ on Thursday found their way blocked by fresh snowfall; which is never great on small wheels. Perversely, it was 28 degrees Celsius and beach weather only a week or so earlier. This is the problem with scheduling events during April; rather than June according to the traditional EuroVespa/VWD calendar. April showers lived up to their name but the snow-storms in the mountains belonged to a very late winter.

Giuseppe Gallo’s photo from the Passo Delle Radici in the Apennines (Facebook)

How is VWD set up?

At the end of 2023 Piaggio published a marketing review that valued the Vespa brand at just over a Billion Euros. I don’t know how you put a price on such things but it possibly undervalues the passion of traditional Vespisti from all over the globe. Often, this is a passion for products that Piaggio no longer make, and haven’t made now for a very long time.

The new police edition Vespa GTS with optional mini-Carabinieri figurine

Loyal fans

There seems to be a significant disconnect between Piaggio – a business selling modern mobility solutions – and Vespa enthusiasts; many of whom have not bought a scooter from Piaggio for two decades or more. I’m sure Piaggio appreciate the passion of ageing Vespisti to a certain extent, but two-stroke Vespa riders are no longer their actual customers. They did, however, contribute to building the Vespa legend; making it a far more recognisable worldwide brand than, for example, Piaggio scooters.

Vespa village

A similar gulf exists between Piaggio – a modern business endeavouring to gain a great reputation for clean urban mobility solutions – and the massive aftermarket industry supported by the Italian tuning houses and the big German parts retailers. So much so that few of them were represented by stands in one of the biggest Vespa gatherings for years.

A peek inside the Pinasco 244 kit for PX200. Yes the cylinder stud is open right through the transfer ports.

Lack of parts

In terms of representation, Pinasco were on hand (with CTP) on a large stand showing not only their latest wares, but also historic machines like the Gori smallframe sprinter and twin-carb racing PX. The only other tuners present were Polini, and a static display of the latest goodies from ‘terror of the Tyrol’ Egig. There was nowhere that I could see in the Vespa Village where you could get anything useful like oil, bulbs or cables; though there was a small repair workshop for those in need. 

Vespa Wideframe Manual

Of course, my interest in the Vespa Village was to promote my first ever Vespa workshop guide (The Complete Spanner’s Manual: Vespa Wideframe Engines – available on SLUK and in all major scooter shops); ably assisted by Tracy and Matt Philips, who was one of the main contributors. 

Italian scooterboys

Very generously, I was given space on the stand of Scooterismo; the Italian Scooterboys Magazine by Gegio. This is an Italian-language online magazine very much in the same vein as SLUK. Gegio was also hosting promotion of Motor Bike Expo (MBE) in Verona in January 2025 where he curates the Ruote Piccolo (‘small wheels’) section; displaying the best in Italian scooter and moped customising and culture. If you have a special custom scooter to display, get in touch with him.

Yes, that’s apparently the original colour.

Bella Moto

Over the weekend the Scooterismo stand would also display interesting scooters from touring Italians going to Nordcap (SlingingwithVesPina), Paul Diamond’s amazing accessorised Faro Basso ‘Bello Moto’ (expect a SLUK video on that later) and a lovely original paint pale green SS90 that Luca Coriani of Vespazio discovered in Indonesia.

What was great

The best part of the event from my perspective was the warmth of the welcome for the Vespisti by the town of Pontedera itself. Having roughly 20,000 scooters running around town and permanently gumming-up the traffic flow outside the Vespa Village would set off road rage incidents in many countries or small gun battles in the USA. Probably. In Pontedera – a town which owes much of its existence to Piaggio – the response is much mellower. Vespa is in the blood and has financially underpinned the success of this town for generations.

The father of Vespa

This respect, particularly for great patriarch Enrico Piaggio, spilled out into street art and signage depicting the great man. Every shop featured some tribute to the Vespa. Bars were turned into impromptu Vespa art galleries. Massive illuminated scooters decorated the town centre and various roundabouts. As far as a welcome goes, Pontedera pulled out all the stops and should be massively proud.

Factory tour

Of course, only Vespa’s hometown could offer factory tours on a little train (no photos allowed), visits to the Piaggio museum and guided tours to Pontedera’s surrounding towns and countryside. Every one of these had to be pre-booked.

Attractions

Throughout the weekend there were film screenings, talks by very senior Piaggio engineers, bands and other performers. The Monkeys scooter club set up Stefano Dioni’s ApeDisco in the middle of the scooter park, blasting out the tunes and offering free drinks to fellow Vespisti. This was all on top of a gymkhana competition, a concours d’elegance and all of the usual back-slapping and trophy presenting that you normally get. 

It truly was a festival of Vespa, but like any massive festival with multiple stages, you had to be very well organised to juggle seeing everything you’d like to.

What wasn’t great?

 The core problem was one of the organisation biting off more than it could chew in terms of attendees and ambition. The agenda seemed very fluid and any updates were delivered digitally to a largely analogue audience, who I’m sure would have preferred a piece of paper with a timetable on one side and a map on the other. In general, signage from one location to another was minimal or absent.

Feeding the masses

I’ve attended events like Euro-Lambretta where running a gala dinner for a few thousand people has stretched the capacity of any catering company to its limits, and sometimes beyond. When you scale that to over 8,500 punters, it’s simply never going to be feasible to attempt it.

Monkeys in the house, selecta!

Scooter parking

The massive marketplace area was perfect for the Vespa Village – tons of space for parking in a secure area – but insufficient capacity or communication for all the attendees to understand that you had to have a matching number wristband and sticker on your scooter to be able to exit the car park. Such were the volume of people trying to ride onto the site and register that the road was permanently jammed on Thursday. After many arguments of people trying to exit the site as a group, with too few security guards to check stickers and wristbands, the system quickly collapsed and was abandoned.

What have the Greeks got against Jezza?

No goodies?

The same problem affected the distribution of goodie bags. Despite asking in advance for everyone’s sizes, the stall distributing the shirts constantly ran out of popular sizes and lorries were coming back and forth with new deliveries. The vast majority of negative comments left on social media concerned the lack of T-shirts with many never receiving their correct size before they left. Apparently, there’s a plan to post them out now. If only there were people nearby with experience in organizing complex logistics, maybe from a scooter factory or somewhere like that…

Lanky fairies arrived.

Free for all

The core gripe for many attendees is that they didn’t think they got what they paid for. For a full ticket of over 90 Euros, they expected to get a goodie bag, a t-shirt, a gala meal and exclusive use of the Vespa Village; because that’s what is usually on offer at this sort of event. What actually happened was that the Vespa Village was opened up to everyone, including the general public, as a party for the town. Therefore, those who didn’t have any sort of a ticket could enjoy most of the event for free; including Saturday’s incredible ride-out. 

Party on your doorstep

The one factor that nobody in the VWD organisation can take the blame for was the weather. The whole of Europe came under the grip of a massive cold front and rain drenched the site on Thursday and Saturday afternoons, sending the temperatures plummeting to single figures every evening.

I think it’s safe to say that without the cold weather, having a huge stage open to the public could have resulted in a massive party, not just for the Vespisti, but for the whole town. Given that the population of Pontedera are as tied to Vespa as those who ride them, I think that was a perfectly honourable objective. Certainly, if I spent my days building Vespas on the production line I’d feel a little pissed off if I couldn’t join a Vespa celebration on my doorstep…

Where’s the party at

As a scooterist rather than a Vespisti, this was my main concern on Saturday night. My previous experience of events like the Giro dei Tre Mari taught me that there are plenty of people on the Vespa scene that still like a night out, but they just do it differently to the Brits.

Vespa Club of Britain

For the most part, the Vespa Club of Britain contingent had adopted the Chimney Pub in the town centre as a watering hole, but by Saturday evening they’d moved to one marquee on the Vespa Village and were hiding from the clamouring ‘euro-pop’ belting out of both the indoor and outdoor stages.

Various cuts of vegetarian were offered

Golden tickets

In the absence of a gala dinner, those who paid for it were able to claim ‘golden tickets’; which were essentially vouchers for €15 (or €10 depending who you ask) worth of food from the many street food vendors set up around the site. All the best stalls were actually hidden in another tent that I didn’t even discover until the end of the night. Some of the sharper operators were ripping people off and only offering €8 worth of food for all the tickets. This very much was the ‘replacement bus service’ of gala dinners, but I couldn’t see how else it could work for that many attendees. At least you could choose what sort of food you wanted…

Special eruption

Finally, we decided to throw ourselves into the fray and join the celebration in the only warm tent heated by dancing bodies. There we met our new Bavarian chums Martin and Ursula who were partying with their adopted club VC Pordenone from the Friuli area of Italy near Austria. They were one of the clubs who rode across on Thursday and suffered snowstorms en route. Here they were, celebrating the achievement of their arduous ride, dancing to Euro-pop together with people in Mexican wrestler masks for no apparent reason. The DJ then dropped ’50 Special’ by 90s Italian band Lunapop and quite naturally, the place erupted!

Allez les bleu!

The song ‘50 Special’ is about the freedom of youth offered by a Vespa and that sentiment resonates with every Vespa rider; whether they are enjoying that freedom as teenagers today, or remembering back to it 50 years ago.

What have we learned?

 Vespa means many things to many people, all with very different backgrounds and interests. Those into scooter racing, customising, the Mod, Skinhead or Scooterboy scenes may find little in common with some of the other attendees. 

The fact that Vespa means so much to such a diverse clientele is part of the charm of this vehicle. From my perspective, being immersed in such a massive celebration centred at the birthplace of Vespa made it a very special event. 

Sure, the weather could have been kinder and maybe the VWD organisation can learn from their mistakes. Changing direction is always possible, as Piaggio themselves proved in the late 80s. 

I still remember the big press announcement that Piaggio were going to stop using the Vespa brand and that their next scooters were going to be called the Piaggio Cosa. That idea was quickly dropped and the new model was renamed the Vespa Cosa.

I wonder if the brand would be worth a Billion Euros today if they abandoned the name ‘Vespa’ and carried on calling all their new scooters Cosa?

Sticky

Additional images: Tracy Round, Matt Philips 

Thanks to Piaggio and Controcampo for use of their video footage