EMPIRE GARAGE S7 WHERE DREAMS WERE MADE...
The ideas and inspiration for the development of this scooter started a long way back; well before its conception and build were even a consideration…
Ithink most of us can remember those early days when we’d just got into the scene. We’d got a taste for the music, a selection of ‘cool’ clothes and we were chomping at the bit to get our first scooter. Greg Wood and his pals were no different. “On a Saturday morning we used to go to the two main scooter shops in Sheffield, which were Armando’s and the Empire Garage and basically make nuisances of ourselves! We’d just wander round looking at the scooters on display, never actually buy anything and just dream of the day when we’d have our own scooters. The owner of the Empire Garage was a guy called Arnoldo Ravioli, ‘Ravi’ for short. He’d come over to England from Italy and was quite a character. Before he took up ownership of the Empire Garage he’d previously worked in the Innocenti factory and had worked in various scooter/bike shops in Sheffield.”
YTS
Eventually Greg bought his first scooter, a Vespa 50 Special from an advert in the local paper. It cost him £155, which he paid for out of the money he’d saved
up from his YTS (‘Youth Training Scheme’ – a government-run initiative in the ’80s, it paid around £27 per week!).
Greg’s memories of his adventures with his 50 Special are fond ones. “The scooter had a 135 kit in it which was great fun, but like most scooters of that era it wasn’t the most reliable! It was always breaking down, but I think that was part of the fun because we learnt our scooter mechanics as we went along. There wasn’t the availability of scooter parts like there is today, it was a case of scrounging round your garage, or a friend’s garage to find a part, or one that was the closest to the one that you needed and adapting it to fit. Also if you were one of the older ones in the group you were seen to be more mechanically knowledgeable because you’d gathered a bigger collection of scooter parts over the years!”
After riding round on his 50 Special for a year or so, Greg organised a bank loan and went down to the Empire Garage with the intention of trading the scooter in for an upgrade. “When I got there I explained to Ravi that I wanted a PX, but he wasn’t thinking along the same lines. He was persuasive, but endearing at the same time and began to give me a sales pitch towards getting me to buy a brand new Lambretta GP 125, which he’d had in the showroom for a while. Comparing the GP to a PX, he said in his Italian/Yorkshire accent: “It’s-a the difference between a horse racer and a donkey,” laughed Greg.
Having been given the benefit of Ravi’s sales patter Greg parted with his money, paid £799 for the GP and traded in his 50 Special. Also as part of the deal Greg agreed with Ravi that after a week he’d bring the scooter back to the garage for a service and a general check over. “When I took the scooter back I got a right bollocking off Ravi because he’d found out that my 50 Special had a 135 kit in
it! He wasn’t impressed, and I’m sure during the feedback he gave me I was on the receiving end of numerous Italian expletives!”
Priceless
As the years passed to present day, Greg started to consider a theme for his next scooter. “I fancied doing a rusteration project as I’d never done one before. Whilst I was mulling over which way to go about it I got talking with my friends about the old times; what we used to do pre-scooters and what we did with them when we first got them. The conversation soon turned to us reminiscing about when we used to go down to the scooter shops in Sheffield, dreaming of which scooters we were going to get when we were old enough. But while we were chatting it soon became clear that over the passage of time the Empire Garage seemed to have been largely forgotten about.”
With these memories in mind, Greg decided that his next project would be an Empire Garage-themed rusteration tribute scooter. “I wanted to complete the project on a series one as I’d not had one of those for a while, so I started looking round for a suitable scooter. I searched all the usual online outlets and couldn’t see what I wanted, so I put an advert on Facebook.”
It wasn’t long before Greg got a reply from a fella in Weston Super Mare whose friend had a series one for sale, although during various house moves it seemed as though he’d lost most of it. “I ended up doing a deal for £1000 for the frame, legshields, headset, horncasting and a box of bits!”
In the meantime, Greg followed up with some more in-depth research into the Empire Garage on the internet, but soon
found that there was nothing out there.
Luckily though, through a friend he did find someone who’d bought a GP200 from the Empire
Garage in 1971 and still had the original invoice, which had the original garage strapline on it.
The build
After locating the items the series one was missing, Greg started the build. “I matched up all the parts and painted the headset, horncasting and sidepanels in 1973 Porsche Blood Orange. I then distressed them before taking them over to my pal, ‘Slacker’ to be pin-striped, and have the original Empire Garage strapline and address sign-written across the sidepanels. Also during the search for the missing body parts in my garage I managed to find a 200 block, gearbox, carb and exhaust, and to complete the build I added an RT kit.”
Overall Greg’s pleased with how the scooter’s turned out. “I wanted it to look like it had been the Empire Garage’s run-about scooter, which had been left neglected in a barn/ garage for years and I think it does that. I also hope that it serves as an authentic reminder of the Empire
Garage, which played a significant part in many young Sheffield mods’ lives during the late-’70s/early-’80s; and of course to the character
Ravi was, who’s now sadly passed away.”
Words & Photos: Stu Smith Acknowledgement: Thanks to Tony Abdy for use of his industrial unit during the photoshoot.