I've been meaning to post these for a while. From my trip to Italy last Oct. Spotings in Rome most of the minis in Rome were these little dumpers. Illusive. I caught this one on the move. Spotings in Cinque Terra - Manarola The gradient was much steeper than my photo shows, you can see the guys are still leaning to the right. This little 3-wheeler went up and down the hill all day. It takes a great deal of skill to drive these things on these crowed streets with a 40 degree grade.
Yeah I don't know what that one was. It had a boot on the wheel not shown in the photo and it was there for several days and looked like it hadn't been driven. All vehicles in Italy are LHD and it made me wonder why we're not importing these minis instead of the RHD ones from Japan. That Piaggio would be nice on the highway, I believe it was a 1200cc. Most of the vehicles in general are all scratched and dented but it might be eventually worth it to find the good used 15 year old trucks if RHD is becoming impossible to insure here in ontario.
Cool photos ! On another note for Jessf it is sad to hear that ontario is getting a "hypocrite" rhd ban throught insurance raise ... Similar hypocrisy happened here in Quebec through the vehicule bureau saying they werent safe.
The first four wheel is a Piaggio Ape Poker. It has a petrol 218cc single cylinder four stroke engine or a diesel 422cc single cylinder, only with rear wheels drive. The second one...I've never seen it, I don't know what it is. The fourth one is an Ape 50, originally (and even only officially) with a 50cc two stroke engine. About the 70% of it has mounted illegally bigger cylinders, Piaggio offers as aftermarket part the 100cc, and other brands (like Polini) offers powerful cylinders of various displacement, from 75 to 130cc. an Ape with 130cc cylinder, reinforced engine shaft and rod, double intake in the crankshaft, 28 or 36mm carburettor and competition exhaust system can do burnouts... It is very common between young boys in some part of the country, the 50cc can be driven from an age of 14. No one of the modifications are legal, but if the engine noise are not too high police has no problems... The others are Piaggio Porter, in the fifth photo it is a newer model, with 4 cyl. 1.3l 16V engine, the others are the same thing of the Daihatsu Hijet (1.0l 3cyl. engine), Daihatsu and Piaggio built a joint venture in the '90s. The ape Poker is about unstoppable, engines are so affordable (petrol engine was better). A lot of those old Pokers and ape50 is going to the demolition factory because in a lot of cities there are traffic restrictions for veichles with emissions class non Euro or older Euro, especially for diesels. Simply you can't drive it in the city...
