Vespa Speed Showdown : Some things are so well that beautiful and unmistakably Italian. The glorious Roman ruins found in the capital. The cuisine that still tantalizes professional chefs and home based pasta lovers across the globe. Pockets of silky soccer skills from former Roma superstar Francesco Totti. And then there’s the Vespa, of course.
Not many brands have the chutzpah to leave their auto design nearly untouched for the better part of a century, but if you do get it right the first time, sometimes why mess with a perfect thing? Set up in 1946, the Vespa company was synonymous the same year it introduced the first model, the Vespa 98. Since then, Vespa says, the brand and its namesake scooter have both
embodied “a zest for life, and a desire to embrace the future.” The problem is, it’s a bit hard to keep looking ahead with an engine that’s about 80 years old. Good thing that the vehicle’s wasp-esque design has changed little, but the tech giving it life has come a long, multi-hued way.
The original Vespa 98 racked up 37 mph maximum speed, but the engine grew more powerful over time. Seven years on, the Vespa 125 was doing just over 46 mph. Modern models are light-years ahead of these early attempts. Here are the latest models from Vespa and how fast each can go. Vespa currently has six different models in its line-up: Primavera, Sprint S, GTS, GTS Super,
GTV and 946 Dragon. The important thing is that, Vespa is not keen on its official top speeds for its scooters – which are a different breed of machines than motorcycles — and therefore reviews, testing, and proxy values will hold::. The Primavera, our first case study, was first produced in 1967, and the model was intended to appeal to younger riders. The goal was to combine
power with a well-mannered handling and controllability and a price point that makes it a good starter model. So, the Primavera was never, and was never meant to be, the fastest, most powerful Vespa there is. Today’s Primavera range reflects all this, with a recommended retail price (RRP) from $4,399 for the Primavera 50 all the way through to $8,299 for the Primavera Elettrica 70 RED.
The first is a 50cc scooter and, being that, it’s not going to be keeping pace with the fastest motorcycles in existence (apart from if it was being dragged rather than ridden). Still it’s plenty sprightly for something at the level of this model, and the perfect entry level offering to ease newbies into the abrasive universe of the Vespa.
How fast can riders hope to persuade it to go? The 2013 Primavera 125 had its top speed of 70 mph claimed by Bike Social. And Visor Down, road testing the 125 in September 2024, appeared to agree, reporting, “beyond 40mph things start to get a little labored and 50-60mph takes a long time. I did manage to coax an indicated 70mph (which you don’t need to worry about, of
course), but that was only courtesy of gravity on a downhill section of dual carriageway.” Of course, so much when it comes to a scooter’s speed depends on engine size. It’s all well and good to try to convey a sense of speediness by slapping Sprint on a model name, but the various models of the Sprint have quite different capabilities.
The latest member of the family is offered in two different flavors, Sprint 50 S and Sprint 150 S, and as the difference in prices suggests ($4,599 RRP for the former and $5,999 for the latter) they’re quite different in terms of specs as well. In 2022, Vespa Portland published an in-depth guide to the Sprint 50, noting that the model’s top speed was “somewhere between 30 and 35
miles an hour on flat ground; A flat road, you have all day to get there; A flat road and you have all day to get there.” The problem with any new model that gets a suffix like “Super” added is that there’s now a burden on the manufacturer to give the thing serious upgrades. If that’s the case then the GTS Super is likely to be more powerful — and faster.
The EICMA declares the GTS 310 to be “the most powerful, snappy and fast Vespa ever made.” This, it appears, is no exaggeration. A Cycle World first look at the ’25 model in November 2024 wrote that candidate for the headline was capable of reaching speeds of 80mph and more. For a model of this ilk, that is remarkably brisk indeed, more than double the original Vespa that landed all those decades ago. Who’d have ever thought 25 horsepower could take a Vespa so far?
Even more crucially, though, its relatively powerful 310cc engine was not added at the sacrifice of practicality and rideability. On the contrary, the outlet continued, it’s meant to emphasize those very things, with a more comfortable seat, and a retooled engine for smoother riding, among the changes between GTS Super and GTS SuperSport. In fact, more power doesn’t have to mean a ride that’s more difficult to tame, or one that sacrifices the usability Vespa has come to be known for.
On a 2023 Bike Matters road test, the GTS 300 Super Sport got to 78 mph, ensuring it remains one of the top speediest Vespas.