Here is something you don't see every day... a set of Vespa promotional playing cards. I can't say that I have ever seen another set of these, but I'm sure that the big-time collectors in Europe must have them. The cards themselves are normal, it is only the case which has a scooter graphic. Very cool, very 60's, and very much too expensive for me...
If you want to give it a shot, they are available on ebay.
For those of you in the US, it is not news to point out that Piaggio pulled some funky shortcuts to comply with Federal law in the 1970's. The list of silly, poorly thought out designs is long. For this post, I'll just stick to one of them - the fuel lever.
There appears to have been some regulation which required that the fuel shut-off be clearly labeled and have the "off" position in the center. Piaggio put special US-only fuel taps on US market scooters with "off" in the center. All other markets had the "off" on the right "clockwise" position. The way that they got around the labeling requirement was to make a special US-only fuel lever. The problem was that the lever was made of plastic, and used a bevel gear (also plastic) to turn the lever in the scooter frame. We all know where this ends up...
