Patrick Joynt and the Temple of Dust
Dream of finding a warehouse full of forgotten scooters? Pat Joynt did...
There’s no doubt that at one point Scoot RS was one of the biggest names in scootering. Based in Ho Chi Minh City, and with the characterful Randall at its helm, the company was regarded as one of the few ‘good guys’ in the Asian scooter scene. In addition to completing high-class restorations, its performance parts were widely regarded as being both innovative and high quality. The same applied to its remade components, often based on scarce originals that Randall had sourced from his worldwide network of contacts. The company was riding high but sometimes life gets complicated. Around five years ago, for very personal reasons, Randall simply walked away from the business. It was obvious to enthusiasts that the business hadn’t been run into the ground and most believed that there was a cache of machines and spares somewhere. Some even tried to track it down, but none succeeded. Of all the treasure hunters, the best placed was another ‘good guy,’ former British scooterist and owner of Saigon Scooter Centre (SSC), Pat Joynt.
Opening day
As Pat explained, tracking down the hoard was far from easy. “The Vietnamese scooter scene is relatively small so obviously I knew Randall,” he began. “With every dealer on the planet trying to track down Scoot RS’s stock I had to tread very carefully. I finally secured access to the collection about a year ago but in total the negotiations took around two years to complete. I also have to say thanks to Steve Powell, I don’t think I’d have got there without his help and support.”
Those negotiations finally drew to a close in March this year, but even Pat wasn’t fully prepared for the scale of what he found. “My jaw hit the floor,” he laughed. “It was a nondescript building down a side street. While it’s not some 50-year-old barn find, it’s amazing how much dust gathers in five years or so. The stockpile kept going on and on, every box we opened revealed something new and every chassis number had to be checked. Fortunately, they were very well organised. Everything had its place; all the bikes had a record pinned to them detailing which engine went with them and had the original paperwork to match. I was surprised that there weren’t more workbenches, but I guess they were
building scooters and focusing mainly on parts, not day-to-day service like I do at SSC.”
Taking stock
Even though the stock was well organised, Pat and the SSC team are still having to conduct a detailed stocktake. As we went to press around 15% of parts and 50% of the scooters had been indexed. Nevertheless, Pat is already making some spectacular discoveries. “Although we’re still ploughing through quite literally thousands of parts we’ve found a large stock of Vespa and Lambretta hydraulic disc kits, both tubeless and split rims for Lambretta and PX Vespas, new SX200 inboard discs and hundreds of seats. There are also numerous exhausts and accessories that we need to catalogue.”
One of the things Scoot RS was best known for was its range of remanufactured parts, the tooling for most of which was included in the purchase. When asked if any of these components were likely to be produced again, Pat was cautiously optimistic. “In short, yes, but ultimately that decision will depend on demand. Since Scoot RS’s heyday a number of manufacturers have entered the market, so competition is much stiffer. We’ll work with dealers to see what they would like to see resurrected and they of course will be informed by their customers. We have approximately 300 moulds ranging from handlebars and horn covers to reed valve manifolds and rims with everything in between. Anything’s possible but it won’t be immediate.”
Rare rides
Of course, not everything’s a diamond in the rough, for example there are more wheel covers than Pat could sell in a lifetime. However, there’s a very healthy array of scooters, including some highly soughtafter models. “The cream of the crop are probably the SX200s,” said Pat. “But we’ve also found Tv2s, Tv3s, GS160s, a GS150, an SS180, some VB1s and a load of Sprints and Supers. These are complemented by a couple of smallframes, two PXs and of all things an LML! There’s also a GP200 which is something of a mystery as they were never officially imported here.”
Trading places
While there are some frames which are only good for scrap, the majority of these machines will eventually find their way to the international market but at the moment Pat’s only taking trade enquiries. “This is mainly due to the crazy shipping costs and shipping times thanks to Covid. If someone from outside the trade wants to place a bulk order that’s okay but we’d advise Joe Bloggs from Preston not to try and order one set of dropped bars as the shipping costs are more than the parts!”
There’s no doubt that as the stocktake progresses there’ll be more exciting discoveries and we’ll keep you posted of any exciting discoveries. For now, just feast on the images and dream…