First, you take a 25-question written test at the DMV. To prepare, the California Motorcycle License Handbook is available as a PDF (click here to download). After that, you can take a CHP-certified motorcycle safety course (optional) or take the DMV’s driving test. We recommend the safety course. Read this short article to see why.

Insurance is legally required to ride a scooter in California. Most of the major insurance companies offer insurance on scooters (call any major insurance company and ask about their motorcycle coverage). Click here to read more about Scooter insurance.

Any 150cc or larger scooter can legally be driven on California freeways. In truth, most 150cc scooters are too small for freeway driving in California, so for safe freeway driving, we recommend 300cc or more.

A DOT helmet is required to operate a scooter in California. We carry a large stock of helmets, click here to see our sections.

Vespa Motorsport will take care of all DMV titling and registration for the scooters we sell.

All the scooters sold at Vespa Motorsport are fully automatic. They have a twist-grip throttle and handlebar brakes just like a bicycle.

Unlike motorcycles, scooters are designed with practicality and ease-of-use in mind. As a result, they’re easy to drive for the novice and for the experienced rider. It is for this reason that people who have never ridden any kind of two-wheeled vehicle are often perfectly comfortable on a scooter. We always say that if you can ride a bicycle, you can ride the scooters we sell.

Sort of. Parking is a bit tricky, but usually anywhere you can park a car, you can also park a scooter. This article can maybe clear up some of the confusion.

Because of insurance and liability restrictions, we do not offer test rides. 

Without a test ride, how can I tell if a scooter Is right for me?

1. Visit Our Showroom

The first step is to stop by Vespa Motorsport and sit on the scooter you’re considering.

• Seat Height & Stability: Make sure you can comfortably place both feet on the ground. If you’re only on your tiptoes or have difficulty balancing the scooter, that model may not be the best fit.
• Weight & Reach: Lift the scooter off its stand to get a feel for its weight (most of our scooters weigh between 220 and 360 lbs.). You should be able to comfortably reach the handlebars with a slight bend in your elbows.
• Comfort & Ergonomics: Your knees should be at about a 90-degree angle, and you should have enough seat and footboard space to sit comfortably.

2. Rent One Before You Buy

• If you’d like real riding experience, consider renting the model you’re interested in from a peer-to-peer platform such as Riders Share or Twisted Road (a motorcycle license is typically required).
• A rental lets you experience the scooter’s acceleration, braking, comfort, and handling in real-world conditions before making an expensive purchase.

3. Take a Rider Training Course

• If you’re new to riding, we highly recommend taking a Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) Basic RiderCourse. Most courses provide automatic scooters or small motorcycles, giving you a safe, controlled environment to learn and helping you decide if riding is right for you.

4. Watch Independent Reviews

• YouTube has hundreds of detailed reviews from experienced riders covering Vespa, Piaggio, and Genuine scooters. These independent reviews provide honest insights into comfort, performance, reliability, and ownership.

Our Experience

• After more than 30 years in business, we’ve never had a customer return a Vespa because they didn’t like the way it rides. Vespa has over 80 years of experience, and all that experience goes into these vehicles.
• The only model we generally don’t recommend for San Diego is a 50cc scooter, as it’s underpowered for many local roads. Otherwise, every scooter we sell is a high-quality, reliable, and enjoyable form of transportation for the mean streets of San Diego and beyond.

Yes. Financing is available on all new scooters at Vespa Motorsport. Applicants typically will need a strong credit score to qualify for financing and rates will range from 1.9% to 12.9% with financing terms from 6 months to 60 months, depending on manufacturer and scooter models. Check out our Financing 101 page or visit our showroom for more information and to fill out a financing application.

The NEW scooters offered at Vespa Motorsport are industry leaders for scooter warranty coverage in the United States.  Piaggio, Vespa, and Genuine Scooters all come with a warranty that covers against manufacturer defects.

• Piaggio and Vespa offer a transferable factory warranty for two years with no mileage-caps. It does NOT cover normal wear items (tires, light bulbs, brakes, bearings, belt, etc).
• Genuine offers a three-year no mileage-caps warranty on all years, but are non-transferable on used scooters.

In each case, the manufacturers we work with have been selected over the years by our staff and the owners at Vespa Motorsport for their solid, reputable products. In short, we don’t often have to perform warranty repairs. Nevertheless, in the event that something happens that is warranty covered, the manufacturers will have to approve the work before it will be covered.

This is a good question, but unfortunately we can’t give an exact answer since it’s really subjective.  If you wanted to, you could keep it running forever, but just like a car, at some point it wouldn’t be cost effective.  Most of our customers average around 3,000 miles per year on their scooters, and this means it will require 10 full years just to get to 30,000 miles. We do have around a dozen people who have put over 40,000 miles on each scooter models that we sell and these scooters are all still running well, so we’re confident that they should last a long time. Even so, there’s too little data to be able to say definitively what the typical lifespan of a good quality scooter should be. Informally, we tend to expect the most of the bikes we sell to make it 50,000 miles. After that, we think they should keep going, but at that point a better question to ask is: are you getting the value out of it that you would like to see? Scooters are inexpensive to buy, to run, and maintain, so is it worth it in the long run? We definitely think so.