Reports are popping up that a new “Lambretta” is about to be unveiled in America, allegedly some sort of run-of-the-mill Chinese bike with Lambretta badges. It’s unclear who’s bringing them in, and equally unclear who owns the rights to the name in the United States. If these rumors are true, it’s a shame that CMSI’s L-Series has barely made any progress in more than four years, after several name changes, while someone else is likely to drag Lambretta’s proud name through the dirt. This will be interesting, and probably not in a good way.
5 thoughts on “The new new Lambretta?”
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Yeah – I got a gander at them at SF Scooter Center in San Francisco.
The font is all effed up and wrong. The badges are made of plastic and are ovals – stuck on with an adhesive. They look very much like Chinese-made trash. Nothing special or distinctive about them at all. Just plastic. Very very embarrassing and uncomfortable to look at.
There seems to a bunch of hand-wringing going on at the moment. The person bringing them into the country is looking for a dealer. And Barry at SF Scooter Center is definitely the go-to guy on the Lambretta front – I can’t imagine anyone wanting the Lambretta marque back on the market more than he does. But I can only guess as to what he first thought when he saw these things…
The rumors are flying, but I’m hearing CMSI (TN’G) and/or the Khuranas (the two parties originally behind the L-series) may be behind it, and that the scooters are rebadged Chinese Adlys, or at least something that looks like rebadged Adlys. Here’s my little gut-feeling poorly-researched rant on Modern Vespa:
http://www.modernvespa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11855&start=40#157874
I’ll write a better-researched but probably angrier post here, later, when I find out more.
Note that there’s a picture of the “Lambretta” badge in the MV thread (above my post). Grim. Painful.
I rode one. Its an adly.
Dang. I was hoping I was wrong. I don’t suppose anyone can confirm who is behind all this?
It has to be the Scooters of Seattle people. They own the naming rights to lami international. If you go to their website http://scootersofseattle.com/scooters.htm
it has the Lami Int logo and link to the “official factory website” I bet if you e-mail them there you can find out more. Eventhough Im usually the first to bash CMSI Im 99.9% sure they have nothing to do with this. Argo on the otherhand, they were tight with SOS when the Bajaj came to the states. I know Haury K. helped Al a bunch.