Orin O’Neill photos

Conventional wisdom in the U.S. powersports biz with regard to scooters has not changed over the years: The bike needs to look like an old-skool Vespa, work like a modern scooter, and most importantly, it needs to be inexpensive.

The ideal would therefore seem to be a Vespa P-series with a modern engine and drivetrain. After years of conjecture, rumor and wishful thinking, that vision has finally been rendered in metal?yes, metal, not plastic?by LML, and brought forth in the U.S. (and I imagine the Philippines, too) by the Genuine Scooter Company.

To say the Stella 125 Automatic is perhaps the most important scooter it has introduced to date is not an understatement. Not at all. Never mind the price of gasoline, the Stella Auto could turn out to be the scooter that puts Americans on two wheels in significant numbers. Srsly.

For starters, it’s not going…