2strokebuzz » Lambretta

Scootertechniques DVDs

illnoise — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:45:58 +0000

Can’t speak to the quality of these Lambretta and Vespa Maintenance/Rebuild DVDs. but it’s about time someone put together something like this. I’ve written them to beg for review copies, maybe we can sell ‘em over at Scootmoto eventually. (I notice they offer free shipping worldwide, that’s extremely generous, considering current shipping rates! ~~Hopefully they’ve taken region encoding and NTSC/PAL into account~~ they have, see below)

Via ScootRS.

Soundspeed Scooters Outfits Electric Lambretta For Upcoming Tom Hanks Film

Brooke — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:34:41 +0000

I was recently made aware of the handiwork of Jeb from Soundspeed Scooters that will be featured in an upcoming Hollywood film. April from Scoot! Magazine posted a story about a new film starring Hanks and Julia Roberts that features Hanks riding scooters during a midlife crisis. Further intelligence from the horses mouth revealed the handy electric conversion kit to change a classic Lambretta to a zero-emissions-near-you vehicle that will be used in the movie. The Lambretta in the photo was used as a template and the kit was shipped off to the local shop that outfitted a different Lambretta. Maybe you could talk Jeb into making another kit for your Innocenti that hasn’t seen the road in a while or to use while you build up that MB Race-Tour 200 engine.

You can read more about the film in April’s post and links in the comment section of their blog. It sounds like a familiar tale. I’m fairly certain scooter fans will discuss the film on several levels from now until well after release. The question I’m most interested in is what 4-stroke engine recording will they use in the film to represent the running Lambretta?

New Lambretta Oddly Like Old Lambretta

Brooke — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:36:22 +0000

The 2010 Motorcycle Grand Prix season kicked off this afternoon at high noon CST (20:00 local time in Qatar). In Grand Prix racing the competition begins with the lights in front of the riders going from red to off. There were 25 riders lined up for the start of the race. When the lights flicked off, 24 125cc motorcycles pushed off from their starting position to begin the race. Toward the back of the field, history repeats itself. As the case with many scooter rides with your pals, there was a Lambretta that couldn’t quite get started and was being frantically pushed to one side pleading for assistance. Just like any large group ride where the front can’t see the back, the rest moved on and the lonely rider was left behind. All the hard work of the team and rider had gone for not. Poor Louis Salom, a former Red Bull Rookie league front runner, had been left in the lurch by a mechanical problem. Lets just hope that by the next round in Japan they sort out their mechanical gremlins and are rewarded with better luck for their efforts.

(Note: A Piaggio product won the race)

Farewell, Nev Frost

illnoise — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:43:53 +0000

David Hardy from teamSequipe.com commented a few days ago on the Team S Equipe 2SB post:

It is with great sadness that I have to announce the passing of the greatest all round scooterist, of all time, Nev Frost.

Nev passed away last Friday, unfortunately I do not know the circumstances as yet.
From the mid sixties Nev was the one you had to beat, whether it be on the track, grass track, rallies or navigation trials he would be there at the top or there about.
Just a fantastic competitor.

I hope he gets the send off he deserves, a truly great man & scootering legend.

Sadly, while Frost’s Lambretta-racing legacy looms large on the web, word of his passing doesn’t seem to have spread through the scooter community, and a week later, I’m unable to find a proper obituary. If anyone has more details, or memories to share, we’d love to hear them.

PSRA Cup kicks off on Sunday, MASR’s first race on the 24th, and Twist and Gone’s drag event in Indiana is on May 1, perhaps racers at those events can keep Nev in their hearts and find a way to honor his memory.

Ocean Colour Scene makes room for snowblower

illnoise — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:43:35 +0000

Ocean Colour Scene’s Steve Craddock is unloading two custom Lambrettas. Craddock claims he’s just too busy to ride, but anyone with a Lambretta fixation can tell you, you don’t sell a Lambretta unless you need the cash. Especially a surprisingly tastefully done Lambretta, that’s been on the cover of Scootering magazine twice (your editor looks in his wallet, a moth flies out.)

Lambretta in MotoGP 125, WTF?

illnoise — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:19:44 +0000

The provisional 2010 MotoGP 125cc Rider list was released today with two riders, Italians Luis Salom and Marco Ravaioli, representing team “Lambretta Reparto Corse” (“Lambretta Racing Department”) Surely, this is a joke, right? One can name a team whatever one likes, but both have “Lambretta” listed as their bike for the season. Both riders were abandoned by Chinese manufacturer Loncin, I can imagine one of the several entities posing as “Lambretta” these days sponsoring a 125cc GP team, but surely they will not be riding anything resembling a Lambretta, modern or vintage, on the track?

Thanks for the tip, Cy.

Taffspeed Closing

illnoise — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:59:34 +0000

Venerable Welsh parts supplier/tuner Taffspeed Ltd. will close at the end of the month after 27 years of service to the worldwide scooter community. Ian Frankland is scheduled for heart bypass surgery, and his former employees will continue running the shop (and dyno) as “Welsh Scooter Parts.” The Taffspeed name will live on in Frankland’s “Taffspeed Special Products” which will still be available from the new shop.

Thanks for the tip, Matt, and best of luck to Ian and the new shop!

Corrugated Scooters

illnoise — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:38:18 +0000

British sculptor Chris Gilmour builds life-size objects out of corrugated cardboard. Click through his gallery, images 20, 21, and 22 are a Lambretta, a mod Lambretta, and a Vespa autotaxi. Very cool.

(Thanks, Vina!)

The New Lambretta(s)

illnoise — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:50:57 +0000

Just for fun, how many “new” “Lambrettas” are there now?

There’s the Piaggio-engined, British-built Scomadi that was formerly backed by the Khurana family and CMSI (and which was known previously as the “Series IV,” the “L-series” and a few other long-forgotten names)
There’s the Lambretta Uno and Due, rebadged Adly scooters sold in the U.S. by the Khuranas after they left the Scomadi project. The Khuranas licensed the name from SIL, and hope to eventually convince SIL to fire up the Indian Lambretta GP production line again, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
There’s whatever those things are at the top of the “Official website of Lambretta International” (the “Cigno?” “Cygnus?”)
There’s the European-market Lambretta Pato, which is a rebadged Chinese bike sold under at least 50 brand names around the world…
…and the new version from the same company, called the Pato 125n, which was unveiled at EICMA 2009 and looks like a Fiberglas carnival ride body stuck on top of a chinese motor.
And please don’t forget the electric “GP200″ allegedly under development for the U.S. by Chinese electric car importer Wheego.

There was also a bicycle in the works, and I believe a go-ped style electric Lambretta pushscooter or two, but I still feel like I’m forgetting some. Some are intriguing, some are embarrassing, but they all share one desire: to capitalize on the reputation of an iconic Italian scooter marque that hasn’t been made for 30 years.

Believe it or not, Lambretta brand-name licensing is finally starting to make sense to me, but that still seems like way too many things competing for the title of “New Lambretta.”

UPDATE: I take it all back, with the news of “Lambrettas” racing in MotoGP 125 this season, nothing makes sense anymore.

Baby sidecar!

illnoise — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:44:22 +0000

With the recent spate of scooter babies out there (Cheers Archer, Calvin, Lillian and a Bastianelli and a Spurck to be named later) and a multitude of alleged “new Lambrettas” on the market, let’s bring back the Lambretta baby-stroller sidecar. Awesome. I don’t check Scooterswag nearly enough. Be sure your child is facing backwards, you know, in case the airbag goes off.

The Return of Scomadi

illnoise — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:26:18 +0000

Speaking of the undead*, while we were hibernating for the last few (six) months, Scomadi came back to life. You may remember “Scomadi” as the sixth or seventh name given to the Piaggio-engined vintage-body “Lambretta” that was being hyped for years by the Khurana family (who went on to stick Lambretta stickers on Adlys), CMSI (who went on to Chinese-scooter obscurity), and PM Tuning/Lambretta Innovations. Apparently, PM Tuning finally realized that a mass production run was never going to happen and decided to finally go ahead and build the things themselves in small batches. The first batch of ten Scomadi Turismo Leggara 250**s feature carbon fiber bodies and sell for £7000, which would have been a likely-but-ridiculous price for a production version, but really isn’t a ridiculous price for a hand-built slick-looking collectible modern Lambretta. Cheers, mates, we’ll gladly test one for you! In any case, we’re glad to see all that work finally paying off.

PS: Scomadi, you need a title tag in the header on your website. Right now, your site is listed in search engines as a blank space!

* Italjet, not Haiti, I’m not Pat Robertson, geez.
** Italian for “League of 250 Scum, on Tour”.

¡Lorenzo y Lambretta!

illnoise — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:28:45 +0000

Chupa Chups enthusiast and MotoGP star Jorge Lorenzo shows a reporter around Barcelona in his vintage sidecar Lambretta. Awesome!

Lambretta Pato 125N appears at EICMA

illnoise — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:04:54 +0000

More to say about this later, but check out the Lambretta Pato 125N. This is the same company that’s been selling the “Chrome Verizon logo”-style generic Chinese scooter in Italy as the “Lambretta Pato” for a few years, so it’s almost surely a typical Chinese engine/frame with a plastic bodywork, like the “Venti/La Vita” is to the Vespa.

Team S Equipe

illnoise — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:43:24 +0000

(Isle of Man) regulations stated that “works” teams weren’t allowed, so the guys formed their own team christened “Team S Equipe.” Unknown at the time was the fact that “Equipe” in French means “Team…”

A must-read account of the Arthur Francis S-Type Lambrettas and the men who raced them, with loads of truly awesome photos and memorabilia.

(Thanks for the link, Matt, and thanks to David Hardy at TeamSEquipe.com for the use of this fantastic photo of Neville Frost )

NOTE: I’m bouncing this back to the top of 2strokebuzz, because David was kind enough to let us add a photo from his collection. Anyone who enjoys vintage scooters must spend an hour poking around this site. It’s rare to find such great site design, solid writing, and fantastic (large!) photos all preserving the history of one specific subject.

New Lambretta speed record?

illnoise — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:33:57 +0000

58-year-old Keith Terry topped 132mph on a custom Lambretta at Elvington Airfield, Yorkshire last Saturday. It’s unclear if the run met “world record” standards, but in any case, he’s faster than you.

What’s with all the Lambretta news this week?