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Category: 2sb News
Fremont Motors Electric Scooter Concept Show In Seattle
In the past I have posted a few items on the electric conversion offerings from Soundspeed Scooters in Seattle. Now the man behind those efforts, Jeb Gast, has designed a new electric scooter to be unveiled this Friday, March 4th at Motore Coffee in Seattle, WA. The party begins at 5:30 and the designer/builder will be on hand to show off his work and talk about the process and plans for the future.
The new venture is called Fremont Motors and the scooter has been named “Fido”. The goal was to make a new, clean design that would allow user access for maintenance, but simple enough to minimize the need. Jeb has shared some preliminary ideas and specifications that sound exciting. He’s promised to send photos of the event but if anyone from the gray, damp city can attend, please take some snaps and send them to brookespeed at that google email service.
Fido Release Party
Friday, March 4th, 5:30pm
Motore Coffee
1904 9th Ave, Seattle
Scooters and Guns:
A Match Made Somewhere In Europe
The Ride The Machine blog, formerly known as The New Cafe Racer Society, posted this photo worth sharing. I think the views of scooters in the US would be very different if such applications were reality. But instead, I think something like this Vespa TAP that Steve from The Scooter Scoop posted about on Facebook would be more highly admired.
Via The Velobanjogent, another good site to watch.
Scooter Riding Thieves Thwarted By Nora Batty
On a cool Northampton afternoon a small pack of thieves armed with sledge hammers attack a jewelry store with their accomplices awaiting their bounty on get-away scooters. Enter a fine citizen with her shopping bag loaded with what must have been bricks. The woman, seen in the video, charges down the street and scares off the criminals who clumsily try to make tracks. During their exit one of the gang was knocked off their scooter and was able to be pinned down until police arrived. Video shows that the rider who didn’t get a way was riding a Vespa LXV. A sad end for a fine scooter. The hero of the day remained un-named by news reports. Modesty prevails.
Registration temporarily locked
I’ve temporarily locked out new members thanks to some auto-bot spammy spam spam that seems to have beat our Captcha system. That shouldn’t affect anything unless you’re new to the site and wish to register to comment. Just wait a few days or email us and we’ll set you up right away. Registered readers can still log in and comment and see all the secret members-only posts (I made that up) (OK, there are a couple), everyone else can view the site as usual.
Isle Of Man Lambretta Racing c. 1970
This is a great video. You may want to turn up the brightness on the monitor but that may take away some of the appeal. The music is so good you’d think Mr. Illnoise had posted this. The event isn’t quite the closed-road TT, though the pilots just show their mettle by mixing it up with lorry traffic. Now you’ll excuse me while I go look for a petrol can in the carport.
Via the SIP Facebook page
LML Electric Scooter Revealed At EICMA
As posted earlier, LML Italia has promoted the arrival of an electric scooter. The German scooter shop SIP has delivered the goods with four snapshots of the literally green Star Electric. The scooter is an electric conversion of the popular LML Star (aka Genuine Stella). Electric conversions of largeframe Vespa scooters has been available as custom work from Soundspeed Scooters in Seattle. I’m betting a Stella Electric may come in at a similar price as the conversion plus an old project someone has never finished. We’ll wait and see. How much would you pay for an electric Stella?
Mods Surely To Find New Pride From Film, Brighton Rock
Mark from Minneapolis passed on to us this trailer for the film Brighton Rock and it’s pretty Mod-tastic with more mirrors than a…place with a lot of mirrors. It shows off a pack of Vespa and Lambretta scooters looking for trouble. Was the Tokyo Film Festival a do-not-miss for the jet-set international Modernist? A quick search turns up the basis for the film. The cast includes the hard-working Helen Mirren. But will it be better than Quadrophenia?
A Scooter Culture
This morning I was alerted by Facebook to a collection of photos from a trip to France posted on Flickr by April from Scoot Magazine. One photo in particular of a child on a very realistic modern scooter coin operated ride struck me as a significant demonstration how France has very different take on scooters than America. I found it interesting that while most American kids I’ve come across love scooters, on average they grow up to join a society that loves Harleys and freely uses the term ‘Crotch Rocket’. Maybe if we had a few more coin operated scooters outside Walmart, as a nation, we too could appreciate sensible personal transportation choices or riot in the streets when they cut benefits or raise the retirement age.
SIP Scooter Shop Photos And Hints Of Another New Lambretta
SIP Scootershop has a great collection of photos on flickr from INTERMOT in Germany. Among the photos were several interesting snaps of new offerings. First, one that caught my eye as a novel design for an electric scooter. I’m not sure of the origin. Please, if anyone recognizes it chime in. According the the INTERMOT booth chart the company next to Hyosung-Germany is “SUZHOU HANDE ELECTRIC BICYCLE CO.”. I think it’s just a good use of long, horizontal, flat floorboards and the raised channels space as well as other ergonomically sensible configuration aspects.
But most interesting was the appearance of the Lambretta name in one of the photos. Sadly, no machine. While several entities vie for the Lambretta name and image, the teaser image on the web-site is attractive if even just the tail end. This group is apparently Irish, spreading the claim to yet another nation. Hopefully we’ll have even more to write about this and other new Lambretta efforts soon.
More Bad Luck For British Lambretta Riders
British up-and-coming 125cc Grand Prix racer Danny Kent was riding the Lambretta Reparto Corse machine to one of the team’s best results of the 2010 season when his luck ran out at the Japanese Twin-Ring Motegi Circuit. The young man from Chippenham was progressing well before having a ‘moment’ which forced him to give up a few positions before his crash, suggesting some mechanical malfunction that he tried to ride through. Dorna Sports are quite protective of their video properties but there wasn’t much caught on screen to share. Thus we are forced to substitute our best guess as to what must have happened.
Mr. Kent appeared to walk away mostly unharmed but holding his arm. Best wishes for a quick recovery.
(More to come regarding Lambretta Reparto Corse in the coming days)
It’s Time to GIVI Thanks
About a month back I received a call from Phil Waters from Pride of Cleavland Scooters. He had an offer I ultimately couldn’t refuse. GIVI USA offered an opportunity attend the Indianapolis Motorcycle Grand Prix as guest of the LCR Honda MotoGP team, run by Lucio Checchinello. Phil was generous and thoughtful enough to pass this opportunity along to an enormous fan of MotoGP. An impromptu ten hour road trip later I was rewarded with the VIP treatment in the exclusive Grand Prix paddock and the privileged of watching qualifying practice from the LCR Honda pit garage while rider Randy DePuniet put in his best efforts while recovering from a violent crash only weeks before where he broke his leg. We were hosted by team representatives Elisa Pavan and Oscar Haro who lead us out to spend time right on the pit wall during the closing minutes of qualifying when riders were putting in their last ditch efforts for pole position. Our paddock passes allowed us amazing access to spend time rubbing elbows with the greatest motorcycle racers in the world. Sunday we watched the race from the main grandstands and had a wonderful time before heading back on a non-stop drive back to Minnesota.
I just wanted to give special thanks to POC Phil, Givi USA and the LCR Honda Team (links to their Facebook pages). Without this opportunity my next post regarding the Lambretta Racing Team wouldn’t have been possible! Stay tuned.
(/shamelessplug)
1, 2, 3: Accessorize And Transform
Welcome to my stream of consciousness. First, after thinking about comments by ‘stefan’ in my last post about trends in the scooter world I thought about a blank canvas scooter that could be customized as wanted. Second, I noticed a photo to the right of the 2sb page that had a close up of some leg shield and thought it was a picture of an accessory so I thought of the currently absent from the 2sb advert rotation Gen-U-Bin. This Gen-U-Bin is pretty cool and even if it’s not your cup of tea, it should illustrate the kind of product that could be bolted on to a chassis that can change the look and character. It’s a bit different than a universal top case from the fine folks at GIVI (who I’ll get to in another post). It’s specific to a model to change function. Third, I was reminded of the stuff from SX Appeal that changes the shape and functional attributes of the scooter like the Pack Rest and saddle bags.
My question for the readers is to point to how they or others have transformed their scooter from one thing to another by adding something. Taking off bodywork was around long before the Ruckus, but how will folks add back from the blank canvas? I’m not talking about a fuzzy seat cover, a top case, chrome crash bars or other embellishment. But stuff that has taken a regular scooter and turned into the scooter that the owner really wish had been built for them. When you wanted it all and got it, where did you put it?
Posting links directly to photos of your creations will probably not show up but I’ll try to check often and approve them.
Thoughts On 2-Wheeler Trends?
As powersports industry struggles from snowmobiles to scooters, there will be changes for producers and consumers. Some folks may make less money on each sale and there may be fewer options for people looking to purchase a new ride. But transcending the current problems and powered by the fact that as long as there’s a desire to buy a product there will be someone selling, the question arises as to what the next trend in the market will be. Manufacturers and customizers want to get out in front of the trend to maximize their share of the market and claim ‘FIRST’ with a bit more authority than the rest of the herd that shifts directions and takes the landscape like locusts on a fresh field. The Kneeslider’s Paul Crowe offers some interesting thoughts on the motorcycle market in relation to ‘customs’ and what the next trend may or may not be. As for scooters there have been a few trends like ‘sport’ scooters that take after a full fairing sportbike and just cut out the tank and make room for a step-through area or ‘retro’ scooters that create few sharp edges in their plastic skin, often reminiscent of the classic Vespa. Both kinds, in my opinion, often leave out the thoughtful design but that’s a top for another day. Are there other trends to be embraced in scooters? Why do we need new ones? Wouldn’t making one right for once be a good idea?
World Meet 2010 Micro/Minicar Show
2SB visited the World Meet 2010 Microcar and Minicar show in Crystal Lake today. Ever since reviewing the book A-Z of Popular Scooters and Minicars a while back, we’ve been keen on checking out a microcar show, so we’ve been looking forward to this show in our backyard (well, our distant suburbs) for more than a year. We weren’t disappointed, there was a good turnout with some great vehicles. I don’t know much about these beasts, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, but to keep it scooter-related, look out for the several Vespa 400s, an Innocenti-made Mini, and an Isle-of-Man-built Peel Trident with its original DKW motor replaced with a Vespa engine. (You can’t see the engine, but the dashboard gives it away!)
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