Unprecedented!

Unprecedented... like me, I’m sure you’re sick of hearing that word! Unless, perhaps, it is in regard to a scooter?

You’ve likely been sending or receiving emails starting: “I hope you are staying safe and keeping well in these unprecedented times…” It is difficult sometimes to even understand how we got to this point as a country and indeed as a world. So the monthly arrival of Scootering magazine is a welcome monthly escape from all this madness and uncertainty, a chance to kick back and escape into a different world. One that brings happier memories. One that is at least starting to feel a little better now that we are actually able to go out on a scooter and meet friends for a socially distanced, six-person mini rally in a park! Second wave permitting (!) let’s hope that we can at least find some sort of useful new normal before too long and get back to some form of rallying and racing, even if it is limited in numbers. This month I think I have come across a scooter that is truly unprecedented. I don’t honestly think that this has been done before. Not never, ever.

Over the last 40 years, I’ve seen countless custom scooters that personally I just didn’t understand. ‘Why have they done that?’ is a question I would regularly ask myself. But that is part of the wonderful world of scooter customisation. It can be a very personal thing. Detailed murals telling the story of an 18th-century Cornish grave robber can fit on a 1960s’ Italian shopping trolley in the mind of a person who creates it. In the ’80s I remember seeing a GP200 with those self-adhesive twin black pin stripes all over it and Ford Capri and Cortina Ghia badges stuck on the legshields and panels. It had an armchair of a backrest covered in those wooden balled backrest covers your local car shop sold and it even had a Feu Orange Air Freshener hanging from the ignition key ring. Do you remember them? They had a pin so you could pierce the plastic and let the ‘scent’ out. But hanging off your key ring on a scooter? I didn’t understand that either. A Lambretta that the owner thought was a Ford that smelled nice? No. I didn’t understand that either.

But this month I came across a scooter that I REALLY didn’t understand. To use that word again, it is unprecedented! No one has thought to do this before. No one. This is truly unique. It’s never happened before. I hope. Somewhere under this mobile scrapheap is a Japanese plastic scooter. I can’t begin to understand why someone would do this. There is an example of all manner of metal and rusty chrome things attached, bolted, screwed, bungee clipped, taped or even welded on here. Lights, mirrors and air horns… okay, we kind of get those. But lengths of copper pipe curved into ho oops? Bits of clear p lastic tubing attached to o remnants of chrome c arrying racks? There a re square section bits ofo rusty steel, with even morem bits of random steels bolted to them, withw further sections of chromec carrying racks attacheda to those. ThroughT some of these are pieces of threaded bar for no obvious reason or usefulness. Exhaust clamps hold more pieces of chrome tube. I’m sure there are chrome towel rails on there. On one side, welded to a piece of steel bar was a car spare wheel jack. Unusable. There are various bungee straps all around it. The dralon cushion on the backrest does look comfortable though. On the back are a couple of metal boxes, presumably just in case the owner needed to carry anything?

Interestingly it was chained to a post (through a helmet) so it is good to know that the owner was security conscious in case anyone wanted to steal the scooter. Maybe not necessarily for its visual appeal but the weight of metal attached to it would be worth a small fortune at the scrapyard. It was very scary to later see it being ridden down the road. Its handling was erm... compromised a little. The acceleration and top speed was also a little slow, its progress down the road somewhat hampered and unsteady, with a lot of weaving around taking place. Behind the rider was a suitcase which looked to be held on the seat by a couple of large bungees.

The world of scootering has room for all sorts of people with all sorts of likes and dislikes. We all have our own ideas about customisation and modification. I always try to remain neutral, not get into the Vespa vs Lambretta debate, or the ‘I don’t like autos’ arguments, but despite my generous and kind nature, despite my feeling that we should exist in a ‘live and let live’ world, even I was pushed to the point of WTF on this occasion. Sometimes we may scratch our heads in wonder… but I must admit this is one that truly had me wondering, ‘why would you do that?’ Unprecedented for sure!