UGLY DUCKLING

Under the dictatorship of General Franco, Spain operated isolationist policies that restricted the import of foreign goods and protected Spanish industry from competition. It was for this reason that both Innocenti and Piaggio established factories in the country. When Franco died in 1975, Spain began a series of reforms that opened its markets to competition. Although Piaggio had the financial and technical backing to exploit this opportunity, Servetta did not. The full history of Lambretta in Spain could, and does, fill a book, but for the purposes of this story it’s fair to say that by the early 1980s the factory was in trouble. Always short of cash, managers sought to squeeze every last drop of life out of the ageing technology at their disposal. The last-ditch attempt at success was a 1983 re-work of the Jet to be known as the ‘Lince', or Linx in English.

The Lince featured a re-styled front end manufactured in fibreglass and a headset cowl, which could incorporate the larger headlight required by European safety regulations. Production was streamlined by painting the frame, forks and almost everything under the panel work satin black. The Lince wasn’t welcomed with open arms by British scooterists. In comparison to Indian-produced GPs, the Lince was well built, but sales never met the company’s optimistic projections. Even in sunny Spain, small, inexpensive cars were killing the two-wheeled market.

In 1985, the Eibar factory was relocated to Amurrio and the Lince was further refined. It’s in this factory that the former AA machine was built during 1986. These machines featured a PX-style stand and a kick-start best described as interesting. The frame of this example suggests that it returned to being colourcoded, with panel work and badging being restricted to a more modern interpretation of the Lambretta logo.