First ride: Piaggio’s MP3 three-wheeled carver

And if this makes you overconfident, and you find yourself running way hot into a corner, never mind, just jump on the brakes! The twin front wheels mean you can ignore the golden rule of motorcycling and grab the front brake even at full lean. If you’re really brutal you can make it slide a bit, but in most cases it just pulls the bike up, quickly, safely and very, very fast.

Speaking of the brakes, they’re pretty amazing in their own right. They grab quickly and smoothly, and while you’ve got to give the lever a bit of a squeeze to get the two-piston calipers really biting, when you do, it pulls up exceptionally hard without diving. Weighted at the rear end by the engine, and with those two lovely fat contact patches at the front, the MP3 lets some pretty brutal front lever abuse – the sort that would get most two-wheelers into serious trouble – go completely unpunished.

It’s hard to imagine a better bike to get started on – it simply makes it very hard for you to stuff things up. Cobblestones, gravel, grass, dirt, tram tracks, potholes – the MP3 just eats them up. I even spent some time riding along at 70kmh running the right hand front wheel up over the sloped gutter and back down again – it didn’t even push me off line. Remarkable.

As you’re rolling to a stop, a light starts flashing to let you know you’ve reached walking pace. One it’s flashing, you can flick a small switch on the right-hand switchgear, and the tilting suspension is locked in place – meaning that you can coast to a stop and keep your feet up at the traffic lights, or simply park the bike solidly with no need for a centrestand. Flicking the switch off releases the tilt lock – or you can just hit the gas, which unlocks it too. Just as well – the MP3 handles like a shopping trolley when the front end tilt is locked.

The parallelogram front suspension unit looks extremely well made – and the motor’s proven itself in previous Piaggio scooters to be exceptionally strong. “They just don’t come back for warranty items,” says Zagame Richmond’s service manager, “and there’s very little to do on the services too – a major costs only AU$180 and a minor costs AU$140. They're extremely reliable.”

Looking at the engineering, effort and componentry that’s gone into this fantastic bike, it’s hard to believe Piaggio have managed to keep the price down to AU$10,990, just a couple of thousand more than a regular two-wheeler for all this extra confidence and capability, not to mention a whiplash-inducing effect on astonished passers-by. We were accosted by several strangers during our road test, fascinated by the possibilities of this three-wheeled beastie.

Zagame’s sales manager Trevor Small has bright expectations for the MP3 – “right now, what we’ve got is learners are a bit puzzled by it – but sportsbike owners are fascinated. And every sportsbike rider that takes one out for a spin comes back saying ‘I want one!’ But the bikers want to wait for when the 400cc and 500cc versions come out over the next few months. For an extra $1000 for the 400 and $2000 for the sporty 500 Fuoco, it makes sense. We’re going to sell loads of the bigger versions – if you’ve got a Ducati 1098 in your garage for the weekend, that’s the perfect sports tool. An MP3 is the perfect commuting tool.”

Once the larger versions start to become a little more commonplace, perhaps the 250 will become a little more attractive to learners – as well it should be, there’s very little out there that’s so easy to ride and to enjoy.

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