Any manufacturer of scooters had a very nasty shock awaiting them when the Vespa GS150 was unveiled in 1954. All of a sudden there was a new sports scooter that was streets ahead of rivals worldwide in any facet you could care to mention. But by the new decade of the 1960s, the opposition had caught up and produced GS-beaters, with the major competitor to the Vespa, the Lambretta, trying hard with the TV175 Series 1 and catching up with the various TV series of scooter that followed.
The Piaggio company had a hard act to follow in improving on the 150 and trying to once again overtake the opposition; the company achieved this with a totally new model in the shape of the gorgeous GS160.
THE GS150 IS DEAD – LONG LIVE THE GS160!
All Vespas share generic design aspects, including a monocoque chassis, and the new GS was no exception; but this new concept scooter would allow for a model that would open up a development cycle that would only run out of steam when the production of two-stroke scooters was relatively recently forced to end by legislation.
At a glance. the uninitiated might think that the major difference between the GS models was mainly in the colour of the paintwork (Graphite Silver being changed out for White); but that would be an incredibly superficial judgement, as the new GS was, in nearly all aspects, a new machine from the ground up.
The GS160 was a larger machine than its predecessor, despite sharing design aspects
