The Ape 50
January 13, 2010 As any of you who have traveled know, motor vehicles are smaller in Europe. This definitely applies to pickups in Italy. With fuel costing more than $6.00 a gallon, the standard pickup in Italy is not a Ford 150 but an Ape50 (ah·pay cheen·kwahn·tah). It is essentially a 3-wheel motor scooter with an enclosed cab. You see them on country roads, usually driven by contadini anziani (old farmers). In spite of their motor scooter ancestry, they are capable of carrying fairly hefty payloads. While they get great gas mileage, their noise to transport ratio is alarmingly high and their speed hardly exceeds the donkey carts they replaced after WW II.
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Notice that the interior is rather basic, and instead of a steering wheel there are handle bars. Two people can fit inside, but just barely.
As you can see, these limitations haven’t deterred the local testoserone crowd. Check out the roll bars and special paint jobs below. |
| Do you think that young American male types would be tempted to trade in their Ford 150s or Dodge Ram pickups for 3-wheel motor scooters? Somehow I doubt it. That is unless the price of gas goes way over $6.00 a gallon in the USA. |  |
Until next time,
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