In 1980, four Vespa PX 200s lined up for the Paris–Dakar Rally — a 10,000 km route from France to Senegal that crushed cars, bikes, and trucks with equal ease. Piaggio entered the scooters as an experiment, testing how far a simple, air-cooled 200cc Vespa could go against dunes, rock fields, and desert heat that regularly destroyed full-size rally bikes. Two of the four machines actually finished the rally, turning the PX 200 into an unlikely hero of Dakar history. It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t powe