Vespa vs Lambretta: Our friends in the West…
Competition in the scooter world has always been intense and none more so than with the big manufacturers who, at times, were almost at war…
Competition in the scooter world has always been intense and none more so than with the big manufacturers who at times were almost at war…
The rivalry among Vespa and Lambretta owners has always been present and though it can get quite fierce at times, devotees of both marques live in harmony with each other.
What about the manufacturers though, who were in competition with each other? Now that was a different story. At stake was the company's reputation and sales, and if the opposition took that away, it could be a financial catastrophe.
Mass marketing
During the 1950s the scooter boom was huge and just about every two-wheeled manufacturer in the country attempted to join the lucrative market it had created.
Some machines were pretty awful, both in design and practicality, whereas others were decent enough but had nowhere near the manufacturing capacity to make any real impact. The two biggest by far were the Vespa and Lambretta, and once they had gained control they left the others in their wake. This left the two brands to fight it out between themselves, which soon became a fierce battle for supremacy.
One the one side was Douglas Bristol, who made the Vespa under licence from Piaggio before it became just the importer. On the other was Lambretta Concessionaires who imported the Lambretta from Innocenti, and they who took the early lead. Peter Agg was the driving force at the Croydon-based company and from the mid-1950s onwards started a huge advertising campaign to
The days when the scooter was an essential mode of transport were beginning to fade and it was the younger generation who attended rallies, the public getting less and less. To keep the rally enthusiasts happy they needed to be modernised and bought up to date. To do so often meant seeing what the rivals were doing.
make the Lambretta the number one choice of scooter throughout the UK.
It started with the motorcycle magazines but soon spread further into mainstream media - the national newspapers, general magazines, and just about any publication which had potential appeal to the Lambretta owner.
It didn't stop there either. Soon adverts were appearing on the side of buses, on billboards, at train stations, and just about anywhere that the public would cast their gaze.
Copycat
Lambretta Concessionaires were spending a huge budget on advertising every year, but the reward was that more Lambrettas were being sold… so advertising budgets were only a small percentage of the profits.
New incentives and schemes were created on regular basis and this helped the cause greatly. Agencies were bought in to create the adverts, which were bright and often used catchy slogans, but it came at a cost. So, it was with great annoyance to see Vespa adverts follow similar lines.
Douglas spent nowhere the amount of money on advertising, but when they did it was noticeable how alike they were. This infuriated Peter Agg, who was the driving force behind the Lambretta adverts, and he vowed to put a stop to it.
How he would do that was a quandary, as there were other aspects that also followed the same pattern. If the Lambretta was advertised in the national papers, so was the Vespa. If the Lambretta appeared in TV adverts, so did the Vespa. Quite often in his letters to dealers, Peter would vent his anger towards Douglas Bristol, often referring to them as “our vulnerable friends in the West” and “that annoying company down the road”.
The emphasis now, though, was how to create something that couldn't be copied, or if it was… something that didn't sound right when advertising the Vespa.
The answer was a new campaign, one that used a slogan that couldn't be copied, called ‘Lambrettabillity'. Confident this was the answer, Lambretta Concessionaires embarked on their biggest advertising campaign to date, while at the same time wishing their best to anyone who thought of copying it.
Rounding up the troops
While the company took care of advertising problems, it was the owners out on the street who did the manual campaigning of the Lambretta brand.
The British Lambretta Owners Association (BLOA) had grown into a huge organisation, holding rallies all over the country and abroad. Peter Agg saw them as the foot soldiers and expected them to promote the brand to the public at rallies and events. The rallies were heavily subsidised by Peter himself, but he saw it
as a worthwhile investment in getting the point across; money well spent as far as he was concerned.
The criteria of the rallies were very strict and though the public was permitted to enter, Lambrettas were the only scooters expected to be present. It was the same for the Vespa Club of Great Britain (VCB), again with no other makes present.
There was no real war as such, more of an agreement… you stuck to your club's rally, depending on what scooter make you owned. There would be the odd person who dared to invade the opposition's territory and though frowned upon, there was no real trouble - no one wanted that.
By the mid-1960s things were changing rapidly. Both the LCGB, as they were now called, and the VCB had to adapt. The days when the scooter was an essential mode of transport were beginning to fade, and it was the younger generation who attended rallies, the public less and less. To keep the rally enthusiasts happy they needed to be modernised and bought up-todate, and that often meant seeing what the rivals were doing.
Bob Wilkinson now ran the LCGB and from time to time was be invited to VCB rallies. “They were ideal spying trips to see what new ideas the opposition had come up with,” he explained. “From there they could be used to make our rallies better”.
It was almost like a full circle – how the Lambretta adverts were stolen back in the 1950s, even if it wasn't on such a grand scale.
Truce
These shenanigans didn't go unnoticed, and from time-to-time things were said between the rivalling factions. Keen to put an end to it all, and to stop it escalating out of control, it was decided for the two leaders to make a point… which they did in public.
Ian Kirkpatrick was president of the VCB, and he and Bob had been great friends for years. Together they hatched the perfect plan to get the point across. In front of the scootering press, Bob handed Ian a specially made trophy to celebrate the bond between the two clubs.
The trophy was a gold plated hatchet and carried the inscription: “Presented to the Vespa Club of Great Britain on the occasion of burying the hatchet”. In return, Bob was given a VCB pennant and badge. With both men dressed in their respective club's attire, it got the point across. “There had always been rivalry and the press sometimes played on that,” said Bob, “but we wanted everyone to know it was light-hearted.”
For years the press had been well aware of the differences the two companies had, but that didn't mean the owners and club members felt the same. They just wanted to ride, and if the two mixed then that was fine.
Separate ways
As the 1960s moved on, things calmed down in many ways and advertising reflected that.
Lambretta Concessionaires vastly reduced their advertising budget and concentrated solely on the current model, now aimed at the younger market. This meant the sporting side, which was growing in popularity, was the target, and with the Lambretta being successful at many events, it almost curtailed any opposition. The Vespa, on the other hand, was advertised more infrequently. Apart from the ‘Go Vespa' campaign, the rest were all rather mundane.
Even Peter Agg had calmed down to a certain extent, as he was well aware of the changing times. There were more concerning things closer to home to worry about, like the financial problems Innocenti were facing.
By the late 1960s he had acquired Suzuki GB, and realised this was the way forward. The Lambretta was important to him and the company as a whole, but even he began to understand it may not have much of a future. This meant, from now on, any rivalry between the two brands would be between the owners themselves.
Both clubs had also taken different routes, and with Bob relinquishing his role the LCGB became almost a sporting club. Mass rallies were a thing of the past by the end of the decade; the racetrack became the centre of attention. In a way it was all a sad end to the huge rivalry, as the company in the south east became focused on selling motorcycles, while their “friends in the West” plodded on for a little while longer…