Vespa’s 80th birthday edition is limited to 1,946 units & comes with a coffee table book
Eighty years is a long time to stay relevant. Most things that were designed in 1946 are in a museum. The Vespa is still being ridden to the shops.
To mark the occasion, Piaggio unveiled the Vespa Edizione Ottantesimo at Rome’s Foro Italico – and if you’re going to throw yourself an eightieth birthday party, that’s the sort of venue you want. The name translates simply as “eightieth edition”, and the number that matters most is 1,946 – the total run, a nod to the year the original rolled out of Pontedera.
Each one carries a numbered commemorative plaque in the under-seat compartment, so you’ll know exactly where yours sits in the queue.
The look is built around raw steel. The bodywork finish mimics the unpainted metal of the early frames, matte, textured, grey and Piaggio have leaned into that deliberately. The whole point of the Vespa was always its pressed-steel monocoque, and this edition puts that front and centre rather than hiding it under gloss. A specific shade of green appears on the saddle and wheel rims, pulling directly from Vespa’s earliest single-colour models.
The wheels themselves reinterpret the closed, pressed sheet-metal rims of the 1946 Vespa 98, updated with a diamond-cut channel finish. On the side panels, a three-dimensional “80” graphic shares that same green, its outline shaped to suggest a bolt, a deliberate nod to the handbuilt, artisan side of how these things are put together.
The rear seat wears a removable hard cover in body colour, giving it a sporty single-seater profile, think competition Vespa fairing — but the seat itself is actually type-approved for a pillion. Wide, comfortable, with horizontal heat-sealed seams and tone-on-tone stitching. It’s not just for show.
Under all of it sits the GTS 310 platform, which means the 310cc single-cylinder producing 25 hp, the most powerful engine Vespa has ever put in one of their scooters. Standard kit includes full LED lighting, a 5-inch colour TFT display, the Vespa MIA connectivity system, keyless ignition, ABS, and electronic traction control. Courtesy lights front and rear are in there too. It’s a properly modern machine underneath a very considered retro skin.
A matching helmet comes with the bike. The top echoes the textured grey bodywork with a matte finish, green detailing, and the same “80” graphic on the back. Whether you’d actually wear it daily or frame it is up to you.
Each Edizione Ottantesimo also ships with a coffee table book by Assouline, the luxury publishing house — filled with archive imagery from Piaggio’s own collection tracing eighty years of the thing. For a limited-run collectors’ special, that’s a neat touch rather than an afterthought.
Accessories are available through the standard Vespa catalogue: a 36-litre top box in matching body colour, front and rear luggage racks, side bars, windscreens, and an electronic anti-theft system. The top box can also be fitted with a padded backrest in the same colour and material as the saddle, if you want the full set.
Orders are open now at edizioneottantesimo.vespa.com. With only 1,946 units going worldwide, it probably won’t hang around.
