The Golden Special, along with it’s slightly less impressive ‘sister’ The Silver Special was launched in 1965 by Innocenti to give the LI Special range a bit of a boost. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Golden Special, which is just my personal taste, I don’t think the colour sets off the lines of machine as well as the some of the other combos. I’m just not a gold kinda guy, too blingy for me. Don’t like the gold iPhone, don’t like gold taps, I don’t even reckon Gold is Spandau Ballet’s best song.
But if you’ve got a taste for the finer things in life, there are a couple of Golden Specials on eBay. They’re not mega rare, but they are far from run-of-the-mill.
The first one is in it’s original paint, a wonderful, unrestored example, straight form Italy. It would really benefit from being kept ‘as is’ or a conserved restoration. It’s on eBay, here.
The second has taken the Golden Special, and added gold. Gold plated engine parts and brightwork. It looks very classy next to that well preserved ’80’s Vespa (a Cosa? I’m no expert!) If it floats your boat, check it out on eBay
Personally, I think the LN was a decent stab at reinventing the Lambretta for the twenty-first century, but many disagreed. And, although it received decent enough reviews in the media, it was less than a resounding success amongst scooterists. Then, of course, it disappeared from the scene completely – no doubt leaving those purchasers that had bought one feeling rather abandoned.
It’s a really classy affair, printed on good quality stock (with a nice thick, glossy cover). The contents, and I’ll run through the full contents of issue 5 in a minute, are very much photography led. I’m not knocking the photography of the ‘big two’ mags, but Scooter & Style does things slightly differently, with the photography really being the hero of every article. There are often full bleed, full page photographs, and a couple of double page spreads, which coupled with the superior stock really make the images look fantastic. It’s the sort of thing you want to leave open on your coffee table, preferably next to a large cafe au lait!! You’ll get an idea from the images below.
First is an amazing ‘secret’ collection of 170 scooters by a mysterious figure known only as Claude. This is a guy who has six, yep six, Lambretta LD’s in his collection (the French built ones, I assume), as well as every single model Motobécane made in the 50’s, and many other marques such as Peugeot, Terot, Magnat-Debon (a new one on me!) Rumi, AGF (Nope, don’t know that one either) Triumph, Durkopp, Maïco and Scootavia (another I’ll have to look up). Fantastic.
The next feature was on a dude from Lyon, Lucas, aka Brus Custom, who makes some really cool ‘LoFi’ hot rod style customs based on a ’57 LD. The kingsize ‘moon-eyes’ gearshift on this machine looks great. There’s a superb double-page spread of this machine in front of a VW bus he’s also ‘done’.
A truly stunning Arthur Francis S-Type style SX 225 is given the respect it deserves, ten full pages on this beaut.
Farewell David Bowie, the greatest stylist of them all.
I came across these great shots of the 250cc Grand Prix Racing Motorcycle in the Australian version of Motorcycle News. The photographer Phil Aynsley had originally seen an old black & white shot of the bike from when it was originally racing, back in the early fifties. The bike stuck in his mind and after stumbling across a recent picture online, Phil tracked the bike down to Vittorio Tessera’s Lambretta collection.
Jerry from Canada got in touch to see if he could find out more about a scooter he’s discovered on his friend’s father’s estate. It’s in fantastic original condition with just 1200 miles on the clock. He’s given her a tidy up, 3 new tyres and tubes, and it’s been running with all systems seeming to operate properly. The only snag being it would bog with a fully open throttle, he suspects that’s the carb needs a bit of cleaning/adjusting.
lambrettista.net 