After its launch in Italy and Europe on 10 June, in September the Vespa 946 Emporio Armani made its debut on the top Asian markets: Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia. In October, it travelled to the USA, where the launch of the Vespa 946 EA was celebrated with a special event at the Emporio Armani store in SoHo, New York. In the USA, the Vespa 946 Emporio Armani is distributed by Piaggio Group Americas dealers in major cities, including New York City, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. The extraordinary globetrotter, a world ambassador for Italian style, continued its tour, with a stop in Thailand, at the Emporio Armani store in Bangkok in November, before coming to the EICMA international motor show in Milan. Then it was back on stage for the 2015 Thailand Motor Expo in December and the Motor Bike Festival 2016 at the end of January in Bangkok and on to other tradeshows around the world (flanked by a special range of vehicle accessories and a capsule apparel collection). Everywhere, the Vespa 946 EA has been acclaimed as “the luxurious, high-end scooter”. Unrivalled and unrepeatable, the essence of style.

The Vespa 946 Emporio Armani was developed jointly by Giorgio Armani and the Piaggio Group to celebrate two of the world's best-known Italian symbols.

The unique new version of the Vespa 946 designed by Giorgio Armani features an exclusive colour scheme for which the stylist created a special grey palette with a hint of green, visible only in certain lights. The Vespa 946 Emporio Armani made its debut in 2015, to mark the 40^th anniversary of the Giorgio Armani company and the 130^th anniversary of the Piaggio Group.

INFO:
946.vespa.com/en
www.armani.com/it

2016 is going to be an eventful year for the Ape: we’ll be hearing a lot about the cheerful Piaggio three-wheeler, a unique vehicle developed in 1948 from a “rib” of the Vespa, which this year celebrates its first 70 years (1946-2016).

A vintage Ape Calessino, developed from the Vespa scooter

The Ape is not just a tireless work companion, it’s also a symbol of style in the Calessino version and capable of undertaking incredible adventures like the ApeWay project in Ethiopia (read the report in the Adventure column). And it’s the star of international rallies (EuroApe). That’s not all: this summer it will go to the North Cape, the northernmost tip of Europe, to raise funds for charity.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY APE CLUB D’ITALIA: 10 YEARS ON THREE WHEELS

No two ways about it, everyone loves the Ape. It really is the most cheerful evergreen on the commercial vehicle market (sturdy and versatile, it can be seen in dozens of special versions, from stores on the road to street food kiosks), and it has thousands of fans all over the world. Below is a round-up of forthcoming events supported by the Ape Club d’Italia, which is celebrating its tenth successful year, in partnership with Piaggio Veicoli Commerciali.

EUROAPE AT MONDAINO, RIMINI. The Ape Club d’Italia is inviting “Apisti” (the Ape fans) to Mondaino, Rimini (23-24 April) for the EuroApe 2016 international rally. The event was presented at the international Automotoretrò show (at the Lingotto Fiere exhibition centre in Turin, 12-14 February), when a toast was drunk to salute the tenth anniversary of the Ape Club d’Italia and the 70^th anniversary of the Vespa. The two-day program dedicated to the Ape will be packed with events (and attended by participants and three-wheelers from all over Italy and abroad): the Ape Village (the meeting point), medieval costume parades, a tour of the village in the Ape Calessino, an Ape competition with “proto” vehicles on a special race-track, group expeditions to visit the local area and places of historic interest (Tavullia, Gradara, Rocca dei Malatesta), an Ape Tuning contest with prizes, plus tastings of local gastronomic specialities.

INFO:
www.apeclubditalia.it

1^st APE RALLY IN CARINTHIA, AUSTRIA. The first event dedicated to the Ape in Austria will be held from 22 to 26 June 2016, in Carinthia on Lake Keutschach. The rally is being organised by the Austrian Ape team, jointly with Tina Baumann, an enthusiastic “Apista” who thought up the event, which is part of Ape Club d'Italia’s 2016 official calendar.

OBJECTIVE NORTH CAPE, SUMMER 2016. Michele Maschera and friends (10 “adventurers” forming 5 crews) will be driving Ape TM pick-ups and vans to raise money for charity: 23 days on the road, in July and August, travelling 9,000 km from Venice to the North Cape.

INFO:
www.facebook.com/northcape2016

On 4 February 2016, Facebook, the popular social network with more than 1.5 billion users active on a monthly basis and more than 1 billion active every day, celebrated its 12^th anniversary. To mark the occasion, it launched #friendsday, which it explained in a post (newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/02/friends-day) illustrating a new video function, which enables users to compose happy moments with their friends, edit and broadcast them. The initiative celebrates the importance of friendship and the opportunity FB offers to communicate without borders, in 70 languages; it was presented with a post – which went viral – showing a series of example clips, which were the same across the world.

And, surprise, surprise, who should turn up in the first “Friends Day Video” to appear in the FB post but the Vespa! The clip is dedicated to Lindsay, her friends and her hobbies, one of which is the Vespa: the clip shows Lindsay on her birthday on the famous Italian scooter. The cake is virtual. the Vespa is real. A true worldwide friend.

The origins of FB. The social network was launched on 4 February 2004 in the USA by Mark Zuckerberg and some of his university friends. Originally intended only for students at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the network was soon opened up to other universities and high schools, and then to the general public, spreading at extraordinary speed all over the world.

www.facebook.com

FRIENDS OF THE VESPA IN THE “DO YOU VESPA?” GLOBAL COMMUNITY

Talking about friends, the Vespa has hordes, in every corner of the world. And there’s the official community where everyone can share photos, stories and emotions.

COME AND JOIN (IT'S FREE):
www.doyouvespa.com

The email from Giuseppe Cau, with photo attachment, reached the Wide editorial staff in December “Here is a preview of the Vespa Super Cau!”. It’s a great-looking scooter, but where does it come from? The mystery was solved in January: “Super Cau” is the name of a Vespa PX developed from an idea by Giuseppe Cau, a famous Vespa rider, and built in an exclusive limited edition by the Busdraghi dealer in Pontedera (Pisa). Busdraghi tells us more: “For the 70th anniversary of the Vespa, we wanted to create a scooter celebrating one of its most important ‘interpreters’: champion rider Giuseppe Cau, winner, on the saddle of a Vespa, of the 1951 International Six Days event and countless other races. Cau has now given his name to a Vespa PX special, whose livery bears his glorious race number (94).” A well-known figure in the international Vespa community, with books recounting his career and racing triumphs, and fans even in Asia, the standard bearer of the celebrated two-wheeler has signed a special limited edition Vespa scooter.

The dealer continues: “This scooter features details designed and built by Giuseppe Cau and Busdraghi; it will be produced in a limited numbered and certified edition, for a maximum of 99 two-wheelers, and will not be repeated. Buyers will be able to choose the serial number (subject to availability) and will join a select group of owners of a truly unique one-off vehicle.”

CHARACTERISTICS. The Super Cau, Busdraghi explains, “is basically a gloss black scooter with the rear panels and steering column cover in a rugged matt black. The steering column cover, the retro ‘1960s’ external horn, the ‘Sport’ saddle with the ‘Super Cau’ logo and reproduction of the champion’s signature, and the number plates are exclusive features for this scooter, whose construction quality and materials are on a par with the original. We shall keep these parts as spares and will supply them on request for ten years, but only to owners who return the damaged part in question.”

“In addition, each scooter in the series will come with a reproduction of the medal from the legendary ‘International Six Days’ race, with the serial number requested by the purchaser (from 02 to 99). The scooter identified with the number 01 will continue to be owned by Giuseppe Cau. Each scooter will be delivered with a notarised parchment certificate stating that the VIN number belongs to this limited edition. The scooters will have the usual Piaggio guarantee, with the exception of modified parts, for which we shall be directly responsible.” Displacement: 125/150.
The hunt for the Vespa Super Cau is on!

INFO:
www.busdraghipiaggio.it/supercau

The year was 1986: in the film with the same name as the song “Absolute Beginners” by the late “White Duke” David Bowie (1947-2016), an appearance was made by the Vespa GS 150. The 30-year-old movie (a critical and box-office flop) would subsequently become a cult film thanks to the sound track sung by Bowie (who also acted in it), while the song would become one of his most famous hits and go down in music history.

“Absolute Beginners” is a British rock musical film based on the book by Colin MacInnes, which takes a look at life in London at the end of the 1950s. Directed by Julien Temple, it featured top names from the music business, such as David Bowie and Sade. The movie was presented at the 1986 Cannes Festival and released on 18 April of the same year. Despite extensive media coverage, it was slammed by the critics and ignored by the public. Over the years, however, thanks to the sound track, it developed a cult following, and was distributed in many countries and dubbed in several languages.

The movie is set at the end of the 1950s, a time of important social change. The music industry was changing too, with the move from jazz to rock, followed shortly after by the explosive arrival of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the early 1960s. “Absolute Beginners” is about a photographer, Colin, who falls in love with Crêpe Suzette (a very young Patsy Kensit; at the time, the British actress and singer was just 18), who is more interested in a career as a fashion designer than in love.

As racial tensions mount in Notting Hill, Colin tries to win Crêpe Suzette's heart, riding around the London streets on a smart silver Vespa GS 150. There is an amusing scene when he loses his concentration and crashes into an advertisement for the Vespa (bearing the slogan: Betta Getta Vespa). Here are some stills from the film and, below, the Vespa ads for the UK market from 1961.

“The Taurinorum Team is chewing up the miles again... An 11-strong team, 18 days, 2,500 kilometres, all on 3 wheels!” Piaggio Veicoli Commerciali was the promoter of the project to cross Ethiopia in an Ape, introducing the famous three-wheeler to the southern part of the country and raising people’s awareness about road safety. The initiative is much more than a promotional road-show: its goal (achieved in full) was to raise the profile of the Piaggio brand, and the Ape in particular, by promoting a business that is socially and ethically integrated with the territory and local communities. It was organised jointly with TAGROW, the Piaggio importer in Ethiopia, and with the support of the Italian embassy.

THE PROJECT. ApeWay Ethopia 2015 (6-22 November, leaving and finishing in Addis Ababa, ed.) was the first trip in a format devised by the Taurinorum Team, with a name that is highly revealing: ‘The World in Slow Motion’. “The idea is simple: to make an on-the-road trip paying attention to everything going on above, below and around us,” say the team. “This means you have to travel at a slow, steady pace, which we achieved with the three Ape vans we used for our first adventure.”

Another objective of the ApeWay project is to promote greater awareness of road safety among the local population. Ethiopia has a high number of road accidents, which are particularly frequent between pedestrians and vehicles, especially at night. The question is closely followed by national bodies (through the National Road Safety Action Plan) and international bodies, through the World Health Organisation and the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, which promote the Action for Road Safety campaign. The three Taurinorum Team crews distributed more than 5,000 yellow reflective bracelets and hundreds of high-visibility t-shirts to local communities.

THE INCREDIBLE APE. “The Ape is perhaps the means of transport that has adapted most easily to geographical and functional variations since it first appeared (in 1948). The project also promoted the Ape in connection with socially and ethically responsible growth, in cooperation with local NGOs, optimising and facilitating the work they already perform for local development. Thanks to its ability to adapt to virtually any terrain – and we guarantee that we put our Ape vans to the test during the Ethiopian trip, on asphalt, dirt tracks, mud, and even when there were no roads at all – the Ape is beginning to be used as a taxi and as a goods vehicle, to transport water, wood and agricultural produce from town to town, instead of the carts pulled by animals which often occupy the road side, even at night, the most hazardous time.”

DOCUMENTING THE TERRITORY: WATER SOURCES AND ROADS. “With 11 people in the team, we were able to divide up the field work: in addition to producing videos and photos with graphics, and editing a travel diary, we could give our attention to other socially important issues besides road safety.

One of the goals we achieved was GPS mapping of all the water sources we encountered on the route, to create a virtual map of wells, sources and drinking water. This is now available online in open source. In addition, a series of 360° photos taken at specific points along the way will be used to develop an itinerary in streetview, so people can immerse themselves in the places we visited.”

COOPERATION WITH THE NGOs: CVM AND CIAI. “ApeWay 2015 was an opportunity to work with two Italian NGOs, who carry out vitally important work for local development: The CVM (Comunità Volontari per il Mondo) and the CIAI (Centro Italiano Aiuti all’Infanzia) have been in Ethiopia for a number of years and know the country well.

The CVM has been working for more than 30 years to bring drinking water to the world's southern regions and educate people about hygiene; it also protects women's rights and looks after street orphans, who are given the opportunity to study and learn a craft. They helped us map a well (in Gurmoladissa) used by more than 7,400 inhabitants, including 2,000 schoolchildren... who greeted us with great excitement as soon as we got out of our Ape vans! The CIAI was formed in 1968 and works for the recognition of children’s rights, to give them access to education and professional training.

After more than two hours hiking up a mountain, we reached a school in Hello, a remote village that teaches children from many isolated surrounding valleys. We also watched a performance by the children from the circus school in Arba Minch, one of Ethiopia's largest cities. Were it not for the CIAI, these kids would face a much more difficult future, and risk exploitation.”

ROADS, LORRIES AND PEDESTRIANS. “Men, women and children walk along the grass verges, flanked by cattle, goats, donkeys, stray dogs. Then we come along, with our three Ape vans: sometimes we weave in and out of the flow of people and animals, sometimes we act as their shields against the large SUVs speeding by on our left, driven by tourists, or by workers hurrying to get home before dark. Even faster are the huge lorries transporting earth, wood and sand, couriers of progress, speeding to the new construction sites, where multi-storey buildings are springing up; they are rapidly building the world at the end of the road and they have to get there before anyone else... We are different worlds travelling on the road.

The traditional rural world waves to us and runs alongside as we pass by; we give out reflective bracelets and t-shirts, we know it will soon be dark, and these men, women and children still have to walk for hours. We are ‘The World in Slow Motion’, and although you certainly can't get to know Ethiopia in just three weeks, these 2,500 km of sand, tarmac and rain, these bridges and roads and meadows and trees and faces and hands that touch you in wonder, these smiles and smells, we've collected them yard by yard, bouncing along in our three-wheelers or climbing up on foot to see what was at the top of a hill, to see still more of this African country.”

THE ITINERARY: GOING SOUTH. “We set off in our Ape vans from the capital, Addis Ababa, hoping to return there about three weeks later; if everything went according to plan... if the Ape vans withstood the boiling tarmac, the dirt tracks, the fords and, above all, us; in short, there were almost as many ‘ifs’ as there were miles... We decided to travel to the banks of the river Omo, in the Omo Valley, and head back north, in a circular route that would take us through Turmi, Jinka, Key Afer, Konso, Arba Minch, Hossana, Ziway, Debre Zeyt and Ethiopia’s cities back to the capital.

Eleven of us left and returned, covering 2,500 km in three weeks, each one of us with his or her own reasons, at the slow pace of the World in Slow Motion, reflecting on what we were seeing, and when you travel in an Ape you have the time to do so.

We met people described by the guides as ‘the closest to the cradle of life and civilisation’ but we went beyond the two lines describing their customs and traditions: we had the opportunity and the time to get to know them, to camp in their villages, to learn the names of their children, to drink coffee and eat maize in a hut, to play and sing in front of the fire under a silent starry sky. We had the chance to take photos, to shoot videos, to write reports and travel diaries, we even had time to wash, to hide backpacks and passports, to run off with other people's shoes. Someone woke up one morning and there in their tent in the middle of the savannah was a hen watching them; someone else driving an Ape at night had a close encounter with a rock, and had to set to with a pickaxe (and the van proudly reached destination without any problems). We covered a lot of road, we all came back, and now we have to decide when to start off again.”
The mission of the Taurinorum Team (formed by three young men from Turin, Ludovico de Maistre, Carlo Alberto Biscaretti and Paolo Rignon) is to organise adventure trips that combine the production of advertising and documentaries with socially responsible projects.

INFO:
www.ilmondoalrallentatore.it/#!the-world-in-slow-motion/tah1w

Second episode; the previous episode was published in Wide Piaggio Magazine 6-2015; you can read it here:
wide.piaggiogroup.com/archive/wide6_15/scooter/index_en.html#/Adventure

Giorgio Bettinelli was the world’s most remarkable Vespa traveller, an adventurer who was romantic and courageous, eccentric and passionate. His scooter trips, from 1992 to 2008, were memorable. Ten years ago, in 2006, after four long journeys on a Vespa through 134 countries in the world and more than 260,000 km on the saddle of the celebrated Italian scooter, he embarked on an “all China Tour”. In 2004, Giorgio had begun a new life in China. He bought a house on the banks of the Mekong river and married YaPei. He seemed to be beginning a new and more placid season in his life. But the “elsewhere and on the move syndrome”, which had driven him to discover new places and people, hit him again. His fifth journey began in May 2006. This time, he was travelling in just one country, China, going to all thirty-three geographical areas that make up the immense Chinese mosaic: his China Tour later became a book (his last, published by Feltrinelli), entitled “La Cina in Vespa”. In this video (posted on Feltrinelli Editore's YouTube channel), Bettinelli relates his extraordinary experience, at the start of the economic explosion of the Asian giant that has marked world history over the last ten years.

In his distinctive style, with a touch of irony and an abundance of detail, the multi-talented and warmly remembered Giorgio Bettinelli (journalist, author, singer-songwriter, actor and traveller, who was born in Crema, Lombardy, in 1955, and died in Jinghong, China, in 2008, at just 53), immerses the reader in the great contradictions of China ten years ago (which still persist today). From small provincial villages to huge urban conglomerations, from dirt tracks to multi-lane motorway intersections, from endless deserts to western-style shopping malls. Giorgio travelled for a year and a half and rode 39,000 km, meeting nouveaux riches and peasants, bureaucrats and beautiful women, the young and the old, and absorbing some of the infinite scents and colours, sounds and silences that make up daily life in the territories of the ancient Celestial Empire. The idea was to investigate the roots of the “Chinese miracle”.

AN UNEXPECTED GIFT. Everything began in 1992 in Bali, where Giorgio was living in a bungalow on the coast: an Indonesian friend gave him a rusty old Vespa scooter. He had the two-wheeler refurbished, got on the saddle and began an extraordinary “second life”. Because that surprise gift was the original spark, as he himself recounts in his book “In Vespa. Da Roma a Saigon” (Feltrinelli Editore, 1997, a publishing hit with ten reprints) about that first lone trip on a two-wheeler (preceded by an exploratory tour of Sumatra, which sealed his love affair with the Vespa, a symbol of liberty). In the summer of 1992, he left Bali and returned to Italy, where he proposed his tour project to the Piaggio company. Piaggio provided him with full support: logistical (through the many dealers and service points around the world, alerted by Piaggio as Giorgio rode through their countries), bureaucratic (through embassies and consulates, to obtain the border documents and permits for the scooter) and economic, by supplying the two-wheeler. Piaggio continued to help him during his subsequent trips; and everywhere he went he attracted great attention from the media, which soon began describing him as the “Vespa ambassador”. Riding a new Vespa PX 125, Giorgio left in July from Mentana, in the province of Rome (where he was living at the time), and seven months later reached Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh City), in Vietnam, after riding 24,000 km and crossing ten countries: Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

Giorgio Bettinelli - Italia Vietnam in Vespa

EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEYS. After that, Giorgio never stopped: in 1994-1995, he rode 36,000 km from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of South America; in 1995-1996, he travelled 52,000 km from Australia to Cape Town in South Africa; his fourth trip, the “Worldwide Odyssey”, was a three-year expedition, from October 1997 to May 2001, leaving from Tierra del Fuego bound for Tasmania: 144,000 km through Alaska, Siberia, then into Africa via the Strait of Gibraltar, Djibouti, Cape Town, riding across southern Asia from Yemen to Indonesia and Australia. The most hazardous episode was in Congo, when he was kidnapped and robbed of his possessions, but survived. Giorgio’s extraordinary adventures continue to capture our imagination in his books. And what about the Vespa scooters that were his faithful travelling companions? The four PX scooters are on display in the Piaggio Museum in Pontedera, a few yards from the factory where the world's most famous scooter was created 70 years ago.

The Vespa PX scooters ridden by Giorgio Bettinelli all over the world, on display at the Piaggio Museum. On his last journey, in China, Giorgio rode a GT.