Much, MUCH nicer than the bird.

More like, this is a post to GLOAT about a cool bike we get to see sometimes.

One of our regulars, Mark (a.k.a. "Lammy Mark"), showed up at our most recent Wednesday outing astride his oft-mentioned-but-never-seen collector scoot, a 1960 Mitsubishi Silver Pigeon.

Having never seen one of these things in person, we'll just spell out the word going through most of our brains when Mark drove up: WOW!

The thing's immaculate, it's classic, it's got old-school charm, and it's actually ridable. Check out the pictures and captions below for details, but we doubt the bike left the showroom floor - nearly 50 years ago - in any better shape than it's in right now. Our ride to Cheney and back was even made a little nicer by virtue of the bike's staccato four-stroke bark, reminiscent (and we mean this in a good way) of an old Briggs & Stratton engine.

Downside? Well, despite the 200 cc motor, the thing only puts out around 4.5 horsepower or so, weighs 320 pounds dry, and has a vee-belt centrifugal clutch, which means this Pigeon is s-l-o-w. Figure 45 miles per hour on the flat, with the wind at your back and a little bit of draft from the P125 ahead of you.

No matter. Relative to most other two-wheeled bikes today, classic Vespas are fussy, hard to handle and darn slow, too. But Vespa folk are happy to trade speed for extra panache and (for some) the fun of keeping true classics on the road – so let's just say the Pigeon trades a bit more speed than the rest of us for an extra dollop of style.

Viva la difference!

Pigeon Snapshots (Flash™ gallery)