You may remember our story from earlier this year about well-known Manchester scooterist, Jonah who had his Vespa GTS stolen. At the time, the scooter was uninsured and he decided to try and get it back after it was spotted being ridden in another part of Manchester. After waiting at the side of the road in his car for less than an hour his scooter appeared and he gave chase.
The rider realised he was being followed and performed a U-turn, on the spur of the moment Jonah decided to try his own version of tactical contact and drove into his own scooter, knocking the rider off. The rider limped off leaving the scooter. Jonah picked the scooter up feeling pleased with himself but quickly found himself being attacked by two car loads of tooled up lads, obviously phoned by the rider. Thankfully Jonah got away but left his scooter to be taken back into the Manchester underworld.
Luckily for Jonah the police didn’t seem to be too worried about him knocking the scrote off, they also didn’t seem too concerned about his stolen scooter and he expected it to be found burnt out eventually.
Feeling blue
Imagine his surprise when out of the blue he received a call last week from the police to say they’d got his scooter in the pound. Apparently, it had been there for almost three months and the once distinctive metallic orange Vespa was now blue and had no engine or frame numbers. The police had kept it “For forensics” and thankfully agreed to waive the extortionate storage fees, although Jonah still had to pay the regular £150 recovery charge before he could claim it back.
A few days ago Jonah went to collect the scooter (along with Manchester’s number one stolen scooter recovery guy, Howard). The scooter had been sprayed in Vespa Blu Gaiola, although the paint job was quite rough and the old distinctive orange paintwork could clearly be seen in certain areas. As expected the body had quite a few dents in it, (some idiot had crashed into it for starters).
GTS project?
Six months after it was first stolen the scooter is back with its rightful owner, albeit with at least £500 worth of damage just to get it back on the road, never mind sorting the bodywork and paint out. The battery was also missing, the scooter had been hotwired, some of the plastic panels were either damaged or missing, the glovebox is hanging off and of course the numbers had been ground off. All in all it would be enough to write the scooter off had it been insured. Our hapless have-a-go hero may have got the scooter back but it’s going to end up being either sold as a project or broken up and sold for spares.
New products always in development…
good on you Jonah
Cheers pal,
I’m so pleased Jonah got it back and in awe of his bravery, but incensed about the state of it when he finally got it back…
Battered and bruised scoot but not down and out, it will live again Ali x