SPARES HUNTING IN ITALY

Split between their Sheffield shop and a storage facility in northern Italy, Armando’s must have one of the largest catalogues of NOS Lambretta spares in the country, perhaps in Europe. Giulio explains that this is the result of both luck and good business. “In the early 80s Lambretta was, in the view of most Italians, dead. Guido and I went to the Milan motorcycle show and started asking around, trying to find anyone with Lambretta spares. Eventually we were sent to an old guy who clearly thought we were a nuisance – two young Englishmen asking about scrap parts. We persuaded him to take us to his warehouse but his driving was so bad I thought we’d never make it. Once inside it was a treasure trove, every box we opened was filled with NOS parts. We started to put things on one side and when we’d got what we thought we could afford together asked how much he wanted. He just asked how big our van was, we told him and he worked out a price based on its capacity! He didn’t care what we took. We filled every spot of the van, map pockets, glove box even under the seats. That was the start of many years tracking down and buying spares.”

Guido expanded on this theme: “Since then things have got much harder as 20, even 15 years ago, it was possible for someone to take a fortnight off work, drive a van to Italy and fill it without difficulty. Now, there’s real detective work involved. We have contacts throughout Italy and they follow up leads getting further and further off the beaten track. Even when someone does decide to sell, things take time in Italy. There’s a lot of coffee to be drunk, olives to be eaten and stories to be told before someone finally agrees a price. It’s a very civilised way of doing business.

“The days of cherry picking are also over, we may have to buy a shop of scrap spares to get a decent scooter but that’s the reputation we have. A good proportion of what we hold in stock over in Italy I’d currently class as scrap, but that’s exactly what people thought they were selling us in the early 80s. Things are getting rarer so we’ll hold onto them for a little longer yet.”