Photograph by Ray Mai, Flickr.

Autotalk.com has posted the news that Piaggio has concreted plans to get the Vespa back into the Indian market after a long hiatus.

India has the second largest two-wheeler market in the world. That said, with per-capita wealth slowly increasing, the trend has been away from scooters over the last decade towards motorcycles and cars.

Long-time Indian manufacturer (and former Piaggio partner) Bajaj bowed out of the Indian market at the end of last year citing this very reason. Perhaps Piaggio see an opportunity to fill that gap leaving LML to continue to manufacturer P-clone Vespas.

The plan has approved construction of a dedicated Indian factory to produce up to 150,000 units a year beginning 2010. The plan is to launch with a dedicated Indian version of Vespa’s current global best seller, the LX125 (LX150 here in the US.)

Specifically interesting to note from the article is that while the past twelve months have been a tough economic year, globally Piaggio have posted that the first five months of 2010 have seen a 5.8% growth in “consolidated net sales” on the same time last year.

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