Stoked About Scooter Stoke

Speaking of great scooter images, as we were a couple days ago, if you’re Facebook-inclined, definitely check out Scooter Stoke, they’ve been posting a couple simply amazing scooter pictures or scans every day. I don’t know who they are or where they come from, or where they’re finding this great stuff, but I hope they don’t stop. If they’re reading this and would like a 2strokebuzz contributor login, it’s all theirs.

BikeExif interviews Miguel Galluzzi

If you love photography and motorcycles, you already love BikeExif, today they’ve posted an interview with Miguel Galluzzi, designer of the Ducati Monster and head of Piaggio’s new Advanced Design Center in Pasadena, CA. Perhaps we’ll find insight into the future of the Vespa?

(Thanks Eric/Scooterism!)

Vintage Scooter Racing Photos Flickr On Blogs

Often blogs will just be a cyclical affair of reposting items and it seems a bit tired. But that’s really the nature of a weblog isn’t it? Sometimes there’s a real news scoop, an interesting editorial or just some eye candy. This is an example of the later to check out. Flickr user Panoramicpete has a very nice collection of scooter racing photos from days gone by. Da Nguyen from The Scooterist, a site that I’ll have to be sure to revisit, shared a few photos and one was in turn posted by the Ride The Machine blog. I expect that another page may now share the image set after seeing this. Or should we just stop wasting keystrokes and take up Tumblr?

Squabblers Rights

It seems that most of the vintage photographs of scootering tend to be from the UK or elsewhere in Europe, rarely do you find classic photos of large groups of scooterists from here in the states. These spectacular photos are from some sort of protest taking place in San Francisco in the early 60′s. It’s also interesting to note how some things never change – there is always the broke down guy, the dorky guy, the cool guy, the lost guy, and broken leg guy. Nice work digging these up Voices of Anglia.

MP3s Lost In Translation: An Efficient Italian Assembly?

SIP Scooter Shop shared a video on their Facebook page today. It is a National Geographic program clip about the Piaggio factory in Pontedera. The video has a few shots of vintage machines in their museum. But one of the views that appealed to me was the factory building tucked in the Tuscan hills shown in the background of the test ride shots. I don’t know if the buildings are the same, but it was reminiscent of those old aerial photos of the factory from the 1950s. Other parts show the processes involved in the building of their larger engines (What are they doing tossing crankshaft halves into big vats of rocks?!) and the assembly of the MP3 hybrid scooter. Not a 2-stroke in sight. I wonder where they build those? I focus on the visual aspects of the video because it’s all in Italian, a language I do not understand. If anyone wants to translate any remarkable points of what looks to be a standard factory tour for the kind of shows that used to make the Discovery Channel great before they jumped the shark, feel free to post below.

Corradino D’Ascanio Honored With Exibit At Pontedera

The New York Times Wheels Blog offers a report on the man behind the original design of the Vespa. The most interesting note for those immersed in all things Piaggio, is that he was left to design trade show displays instead of the helicopters that he really wanted to work on. He was a great designer because he started with the user and moved out from there. Today most things start with an industrial designers screen and are forced around a user, with poor results. Step away from the CAD software and Illustrator, dudes. Just because it makes a pretty picture does mean that it will make a useful object. D’Ascanio knew this. Lets be thankful that he didn’t have the tools that modern designers have.

Thanks to Scooterville in Minneapolis for sharing the post on facebook. The owner, Bob, once designed sets and trade show displays and now sells Vespas. Full circle.

The Hoffmann Vespa Story: Nazis, Bankers and Another Case of Piaggio Licensing Gone Wrong

SIP Scootershop posted a history of the Hoffman Vespa on their community blog. It’s not fluff piece and it’s worth a read. Anyone with a Hoffman GS out there, raise your hand.

Dussel and Uschold’s World Tour

Between July 1955 and July 1956, Wim Dussel and Manfred Uschold travelled the world on a Maico scooter with sidecar. 36 photos (from 10,000 negatives!) were published in Dussel’s 1957 book De wereld is nog altijd rond : per scooter dwars door Europa, Azië en Noord-Amerika, more than 400 are published in this must-see photo set.

Thanks a million, Scooterism!

Heinkelfest 2011

Heinkelfest may not be the biggest rally of the year, even if all 350 of the Heinkel Tourists sold in the U.S. were still running. But any rally so carefully targeted deserves a shout, right? Organizer Michael McWilliams (who–you might have guessed–is also behind HeinkelTourist.com and the North American Heinkel Registry is a past-president of the Vespa Club of America and one of the nicest guys in scootering. Even if you find yourself Heinkel-less, or can’t make it to Colorado Springs later this month, you might want to print the handsome event poster for your garage.

Nopooh’s Motor X Tees

Oh, geez, I was wearing one of my favorite t-shirts over the weekend and it occurred to me that I promised them a plug here (MONTHS ago). Check out Motor X – Graphic Tees from nopooh. “Francorchamps” (left… that’s a model, not me, he looks better in it.) is my favorite but they have a few great ones. I like their subtle non-douchey designs and I hope someday they give a few rare old motorscooters the same graphic treatment.

1947 Mohs Scooter

Referring to our post about the scooter show at L.A.’s Petersen Automotive Museum, Pete in Wisconsin sent us a related story about Bruce Baldwin Mohs’ 1947 13-foot-long motorscooter, which is featured at the Petersen show.

Mohs is an 87-year old Madison inventor/eccentric, he built the four-passenger scooter after hours at his school’s metal shop as a teenager. It’s not as elegant as the Vespa, introduced a year earlier, but the machine got some attention at the time, and Mohs rode it as far as Kentucky.

Scooter Exhibit Opens in Los Angeles

The New York Times previewed the “Scooters: Size Doesn’t Always Matter” exhibit at Los Angeles’ Peterson Automotive Museum. Mmmm, chrome Rumi! Aside from the sorta-cringe-inducing name, it looks like a fantastic and well-researched exhibit and a rare chance to see a lot of really oddball scooters.

Thanks for the link, Alex Pelzel!

Ace’s Bomber Jacket

Inspired by a newbie thread about patches on Modern Buddy, I finally tracked down the source of a particularly awesome JPEG I came across a few weeks ago. Turns out the JPEG was just the tip of the iceberg of Ace’s Jacket Cosplay Breakdown. Anyone stuck home watching Dr. Who on PBS in the late 80s, I bet you’re with me on this one. I wanted a scooter in 1986, but I wanted a Honda, thanks to Adam Ant and Lou Reed. I didn’t know anything about scooter culture back then, but man, did I want a bomber jacket with a bunch of random patches.

Lambretta LD3: No Tilting At Windmills

While it probably handled more like an ATV rather than a 2 wheeler like the Piaggio MP3, I’d trade the lean for the style. Via Ride The Machine (again), but originally from this Czech scooter site with lots of cool old images.

Mod Photo Mystery

Also via Scooterism: Help Sandra find the photo of her brother Raymond Kelley used in countless books, ads, and such. I don’t have my copy of Richard Barnes’ Mods handy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the original source. Sandra refers to a book “Mods” in the story, but I think that’s a newer book that features the NME cover. As neat as it would be to see Sandra reunited with a good print, it’d be even better to see the original photographer pick up royalties from the frequent and probably unauthorized reproduction of his work over the years, and hopefully get a chance to exhibit or publish more prints from that period!

Next Page »