This photo must show the Innocenti production line just as it was switching over to the GP scooters. I'm guessing that this lot of scooters was destined for the UK market. You can tell these are the last of the SX150 and SX200 because they have the "square" horncasting badge. You can also see that the white SX150 in the middle of the photo does not have handles on the cowl. If you look at the far right, you'll see the tell-tale stripe of a GP sidepanel poking through between the legshield of the red and white SX. Is it me, or does it look like all these scooters had silver wheels and brake drums? That would make sense, as the GP's had those painted silver. Also, note that the horn cover is polished silver and not painted on these scooters. Kind of flashy!
]]>
Photograph shows some of German lads in Miltonberg, Germany - taken in fall 1951 or spring of 1952 . Written on back is: "German boys on motorcycles. I took the same picture for them with one of their camera's. Miltonberg, Germany. I know the date from other images of his from this trip- err tour..."
]]>
Via: The Scooterist.
]]>
Wow, this scooter on ebay has got to be one of the absolute worst bodge jobs that I have ever seen. It really is a sort of "greatest hits" of all the ways that the supposedly "restored" scooters coming out of Vietnam go wrong. Let's start with the picture above. You can tell just by the look of it that something is very wrong. The side cowl just looks totally off kilter. It looks like they took a VBB body, and then hacked off the back of it to make it look like an earlier 50's Vespa. They must have modified the cowl to fit, but it just makes it look like it was put on at the wrong angle. How many rusty/beat-down Vespa frames went into the building of this particular scooter? The world may never know...
Of course, the handlebars are all wrong, and likely home-made, as is the "fender light". The chrome just looks garish. A chrome expansion chamber (also likely home-made and probably doing nothing for performance)... why not?
Here you see the abomination at the front end. The legshields look far too upright. That is clearly a P-series fork, and it looks horrible. Not only that, but you have to question how they modified the fork to fit in this frame. Some cutting and welding was certainly required. Would you trust your life to that?
This thing is just horrible. They even didn't bother to take new pictures for the ebay listing. This is clearly shot in the old country, and they were too lazy to take off the Vietnam license plate. The ebay listing says Miami Florida, but the photos say Ho Chi Minh City.
]]>
The January Auctions in Las Vegas are over. There were a few (probably) bad scooters that made it to the auction block, and brought way more than they should have. There was a really bad Vietnam restored Vespa, and a Series II Lambretta that looks like it was an A.P.I. Indian-made Lambretta that was "restored" there. Both buyers are likely to be very dissapointed. As expected, the TWN and the Salsbury brought big money. They looked like they were quite nice. Here are some of the notable results:
Friend of the site, Horacio, from Argentina, sent us this photo of his Siambretta LD. It sure looks nice! Siambrettas were Lambrettas built under license in Argentina. They built LD's, Series II's, and their own version of a TV175 Series III that looks very different from the standard Italian TV. The Siambrettas were never sold in the US, so I've never seen one in person.
Feel free to send us your photo, we love seeing scooters!
]]>
]]>
"Since no country has control over the place it is full of smugglers, illegal money changers, blown up vehicles, land mines, cars left here from various insurance scams and piles of trash. ATTENTION! There are no police or military here. There's no law. However, there are plenty of mines. Always stick to the dirt track."
Three Norwegians are driving Vespas from Morocco to Guinea Bissau as part of a sort of time trial race. Yes, they are crazy. We here at Scooterlounge wish them well, and also wish we were 1/100th as brave. You can follow their exploits on their blog here.
]]>
We here at Scooterlounge don't just blog, we also run a scooter website... Life has been pretty busy for the last year or so, and we have not had a lot of time to push updates or additions to the main site. All our efforts have been mainly going to keeping the blog going.
Well, that is changing. We're working on a bunch of new content for the site. Some of it based upon things we've done for the blog, and others are just nice fresh pages.
The first thing we have for your is Dano's amazingly detailed story of how he restored his Lambretta SX200 (pictured above, after restoration). This is the good stuff. You want to read it, I know you do. Head on over to the main site and check it out!
]]>
]]>