Comment: I’m in love

It’s official: I’m in love. It’s a vehicle not sold here, it’s compact, Italian, has a rich history, it’s ubiquitous, cheap, stylish, fitted with a roll cage, they’ve made a fire truck version, and they race them.

I have not driven it, sadly, nor seen one with my own two eyes. But its very existence proves without question (but with certain exceptions) why Italians are so much cooler than Canadians.

It’s the Piaggio Ape, pronounced “ah-peh” — Italian for bee. Apparently Vespa is Italian for “wasp”, and that’s what this three-wheeled scooter-based contraption sounds like.

I’m relying heavily on Wikipedia here, mainly because I was looking at scooters and stumbled upon Piaggio’s UK site, where they also sell the Ape. Apparently it stems back to the work of Corradino D’Ascania, an Italian aeronautical engineer who not only helped develop the modern helicopter, became a general in the Italian army, designed the modern scooter (first the tube-frame Innocenti Lambretta), then the Piaggio Vespa.

Now, the Ape is available in my favourite, the “Ape Web” with a full roll cage. There’s even a limited-production “Ape Calessino“. Pretty cool. So is the fact that the Ape “TM” will do 130kph! If you search on Flickr, you can see many of the interesting ways they’re used…but first, watch a few of the more extreme Apes doing their thing… (Speed freaks, the racing ones are in the last video.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQQajkHUyx4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IFCFjXxKM8[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2kUR-7CxeM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmRBKoojYMA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibImp5lCJjc[/youtube]

*The Ape photo on the homepage is used under Creative Commons license, from Buckofive on Flickr.