Smoke and mirrors

'I guess we all like to show off,' admits Miki, 25, as she kills the engine and hauls Pink Panther onto its kick-stand. A customised Vespa ET8 150, she had it sprayed bubblegum pink a few weeks ago. 'I ride around town, people look up and see the bike. I like to be noticed.' Being noticed is not a problem: the virulent glow of the bike pulls you in like an electromagnet as it sits in a row of vintage scooters. Granville Circuit in Tsim Sha Tsui has been transformed into an oily catwalk of Italian chrome and wing mirrors, as one by one tootling two-wheelers breeze in and park up alongside each other. It's early on a balmy evening, and in a few minutes the 25-strong crew of the Scooter Power gang will take to the streets en masse.

A bold rebuff to naysayers who mock scooters' tinny engines and consider a bolt-upright riding posture more than a little geeky, the Vespa has never gone out of fashion. Designed by Piaggio in Italy in 1946, it has joined the Mini Cooper and Volkswagen Beetle as a machine that makes an artform out of practicality. What Michael Caine did for the Mini in The Italian Job was done for the Vespa 15 years earlier, when Audrey Hepburn plonked herself on the back of one during her 1953 Roman Holiday. Yet unlike the Mini, the Vespa had a major role to play in the evolution of British 'youf' culture.

The term 'Modernist' was originally used to describe groovy cats with a penchant for modern jazz, sharp threads and hip new slang. At its core was the central aesthetic of 'look good, stay cool': during the mod movement's 1960s heyday, Italian scooters (the Vespa and the deceased Lambretta) were essential parts of the mod make-up. Practical, inexpensive modes of transport, they enabled the well-dressed young scamp to travel without creasing his suit, while his ladyfriend, thanks to the low seat and big windshield at the front, could still wear a skirt to the disco. Easily customised with extra fog lights, wing mirrors and sharp colour schemes, the Vespa quickly became a style classic, opposing, in particular, the bigger, more cumbersome bikes of leather-clad rockers.

Naturally, a 1960s British cultural phenomenon does not translate well in 21st-century Hong Kong. Hairy heathens riding big bikes was never an issue here; and rockers these days are mainly executives roaring away from mid-life crises on $225,000 Harley-Davidsons. And for all their style and influence, the original mods were a vicious, tribal bunch branded 'sawdust Caesars' by one judge after the British seaside town of Margate was trashed during the 1964 Easter riots. For the members of Scooter Power, however, their bikes have become a way of life.

'We're not mods in the sense that we don't talk to people who aren't wearing the right shoes,' jokes Gripson Pang, who could nevertheless pass as an extra from movie Quadrophenia in his parka coat and mod trainers. Sucking on a cigarette with studied, catalogue-pose cool, he carefully wipes down his vintage Vespa 150, which he has daubed with King of Kowloon-style graffiti. 'I guess we've taken what we like from Western culture. A lot of us listen to hip-hop, but at the same time I identify myself with the retro look that people associate with these bikes. It feels good to ride something you have put your personality into. '

Scooters remain an excellent choice if you are fed up with traffic jams and have been squashed into one packed MTR carriage too many. A new Vespa is an affordable slice of style, setting you back as little as $27,000 on the road. Combine that with stupendously low fuel consumption (about 160 kilometres to five litres) and you have a winning combination.