PERFORMANCE? IT’S BACK TO BASICS

Discuss the electric conversion with any rally-going scooterist and I can guarantee it’s not long before the question of the kit’s performance is raised. The short answer is that it has a top speed of around 55mph, but Niall has more to say on the subject. “As enthusiasts we’ve forgotten why scooters were originally built,” he began. “The past few years have seen an explosion in performance and reliability. It’s not difficult for a half-decent home mechanic to build a scooter with performance way beyond anything the major manufacturers could have dreamed of. Consider the Series 2 Li150. That left the factory producing around 5bhp and with a top speed of 45mph, yet it was the best-selling Lambretta of all time. Why? Because it did the job it was built for, namely short trips around town. That’s the type of journey our kit is aimed at. My daily commute is seven miles and an electric scooter is perfect for that type of journey. It’s not designed as a mile-munching tourer but does offer an alternative where legislation or environmental concerns are restricting the use of petrol engines.” It’s also fair to say that at around £3495 the conversion kit isn’t cheap. For that figure the average scooterist could build a remarkable two-stroke engine. However other road users see things differently and the kit has seen an entirely new group of customers beating a path to Retrospective’s door. New enthusiasts are always welcome and although these commuters and leisure riders may never attend a National, it can be argued that they’ve more in common with a 1950s scooterist than the typical modern rallygoer.