FOUR YEARS ON
Not well-known outside Germanspeaking countries, the Vespa TIP magazine – literally ‘Vespa hints’– covered a period of about seven years with publication running for 46 issues from 1956 to 1963. It was the house magazine of the Vespa Club of Germany, taking over from its predecessor Vespa Nachrichen. Vespa TIPs are now much-prized in the German-speaking nations as a prism to view the early German Vespa clubs from a more innocent era and from a slightly eccentric but evocative mindset.
These large format magazines (the same size as) shared many aspects of the almost contemporary British publication, including, by today’s standards, low production values as far as the printed paper type was concerned and the effect that this scored on the photo front was with the images displayed on the covers front and back, where a far better quality of paper was utilised, rendering the often airbrushed photos to a very acceptable standard. Some of these images must be described as absolute classic scooter pictures from more than 60 years ago.
