Though I still need to figure out why the kickstart doesn't work.
I remember on my old Honda Trail-70, kickstarting was a breeze.
The symptom in this case it, you start to get resistance, then it feels like the kickstart pops off of what ever it's catching on and then there is no resistance. My Dad says the kickstart on it has never worked for him either. As it's still under 150miles on it, I'm going to see if I can ride it over to the Vespa repair place and see if they will fix it for free. The scooter is two years old, so I'm sure the warranty is up, but it's worth a try.
I think the Vespa has more power than the Honda Trail-70 had, but one thing I definately miss from the Honda was it was a manual transmission. I hate driving in automatic cars and looking at the MPH and the RPMs and guessing, I think I'm in 4th. On the Vespa I don't even have a tachometer (the rpm gauge) to try to guess where I am in the transmission and how much room I have to go up or down if needed.