Knowledge wrote:The idea of Vespas being more reliable than Lambrettas seemed to develop in the 1980's when most Lambrettas were more than 20 years old, and most rally-going Vespas were almost-new P range scoots.
Since then, P range Vespas have become 20 years old and Lambrettas have received more and better options for new components, so perhaps the folklore has changed?
Discuss
I'd agree wholeheartedly with this ^^.
Combined with the fact these aforesaid 20 year old Lambrettas had generally led a fairly hard life with little maintenance before being placed into scooterists/mods hands who demanded even more performance and work from them for even less maintenance it's no wonder they broke down occasionally.
If Piaggio had packed up or scooterists had refused to accept the new automatic offerings then I'd wager you'd see 2 or 3 times as many PXs broken down than Lammies, because they'd be just as unreliable as the Lammies had been 20 or 30 years ago.
In the past 2/3 decades however most Lambretta riders who go any distance have had a better spares supply and are more knowledgable about their machines.
It's unusual now to encounter anything more than routine/emergency fixes like snapped cables or punctures on a Lambretta, dare I say it the vast majority of terminal breakdowns tend to be GTS riders where anything that seemingly goes wrong is 'terminal' since they are too complicated to fix at the roadside.