The Stella, Genuine/Buddy/ Chicago Scooter Company story:
Vintage style scooter enthusiasts (like our LIKEs) might find this interesting. The whole story sounds like one of my wife's LifeTime movies - but is of interest because it's pretty much our (USA) only scooter company (even if they get all their vehicles from overseas) The following was in reply to some questions I put to the Modern Buddy forum:
Very long story short, Vespa's been in and out of the US market several times with different distributors. The last time they left left the US market was in the mid 80s, because of falling sales, the popularity of more modern Honda 4-strokes, and the inability to sell 2-stroke scooters in California, their largest US market.
Vespa of Chicago was the local dealer then, and they hung on until the mid-90s, and (not entirely sure about this detail) ended up with some [i]of the last batches of Vespa P and PK-series scooters imported into the US. They also were related to a company, DASMI, who made/sold Piaggio accessories towards the end.
In '96 or so, they closed and sold their inventory to a newer vintage Vespa shop in Chicago, Scooterworks. Ron Hedlund, the mechanic at VoC also went to Scooterworks. Philip McCaleb, founder of Scooterworks, was talking to the Agnelli (Fiat) family who owned Piaggio at the time, and had a verbal promise from the family that he'd be the Piaggio importer when they came back eventually.
Scooterworks grew and scooters regained popularity, and Vespa came back, but the Agnelli family no longer owned it, and they set up their own importer, PiaggioUSA. McCaleb took them to court (i believe) and there are lots of murky details here (hearsay, etc) but in the end, he didn't get the deal he thought he deserved, and that largely led to his creation (with slient partners) of Genuine Scooter co, which first brought the LML Star "Stella" to the US (which many argue is more 'vespa' than Vespa's actual lineup, in a way, ha). After a couple years of the Stella, they talked to some asian manufacturers about importing a modern scooter too, eventually they got a good deal with LML who allowed them to rebrand the PGO (Taiwan) Bubu as the "Genuine Buddy." Since then they've added a few more models from the PGO lineup.
_________________[/i]
