A wise man once said that true wisdom is knowing how little you actually know. Or something like that. I thought I knew a little bit about Lambrettas, but the more I find out, the more I realise how much my ‘knowledge’ is just scraping the surface. Thats why I always appreciate being put right if I’ve made an error. Sometimes, I know I’ve made a mistake, because it’s glaringly obvious. On other occasions it’s a real eye-opener. Either way, not a problem I’ve learnt something. Anyway, the point of this long and rambling preamble is that I know next to nothing about Lambros. I’ve seen a few course, and pictures of many of them. They come up for sale occasionally on eBay (there’s some up at the moment… more on them later). And while I have posted about Willam microcars, and even the dinky Minky, I’ve only posted a couple of links to Lambro’s I’ve spotted for sale… and not written about them much on the site.
About all I know about these wonderfully characterful little vehicles is, that A) they were extremely adaptable, with variants ranging from simple pickups and delivery vans, to cement mixers and fire engines… or tipper trucks, like the one pictured. B) They were the Lambretta equivalent of the Vespa Ape C) they were named after the Lambro river that ran outside the Innocenti factory and D) I quite fancy one.
When compiling my “websites, forums, mags & blogs” links page (check it out if you haven’t already) I came across a couple of Lambro specific sites. One, lambro.plus.com has sadly not been updated for a while, although there is a lot of useful info on there. The second one, TheLambro.com is more well maintained, and also has wealth of useful information. It is also the online presence for the UK’s only dedicated Lambro workshop, where they offer everything from full restorations to servicing and MOT work. They often seem to have a couple for sale, and also have a varied stock of parts for most models.
With prices of even the more humbler Lambretta models climbing ever higher, the humble Lambro remains remarkably affordable. OK, it’s not as stylish, and you’ll never blaat about on one (although, funnily enough I have seen Vespa Ape racing). But they’re a pretty cool, quirky vehicle, especially if you have a small business to promote. And you get a roof. The one pictured in this post is available on eBay for a classified price of £2,695. She needs a bit of work to get her back on the road, but is a pretty rare model, and an easy resto. Here’s the eBay link
Yesterday’s post about the Deus Derny reminded me of a particular Lambretta, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then it came to me, it’s the Brasilian ‘factory cutdown’ Lambretta MS (The MS allegedly stood for Mini Skirt – how Brasilian is that!). So I found some pics of a rather lovely (from the back, anyway) Peugeot S57 and an equally lovely Lambretta MS. I’ll leave it to you to decide which has influenced (perhaps unconsciously ) the Derny more…
I’ve followed the Deus Ex Machina guys for a while, loving their café racer style motorcycle builds. To my knowledge, this is the first time they’ve done a scooter.
When choosing a scoot, I’d always go for a classic geared Lammie, but as modern scooters go, I think this (and I know is not a fair comparison, a custom build against a production scooter) gives Scomadi a run for it’s money.
lambrettista.net 