Jumping on the scooter bandwagon
During the scooter boom of the 1950s almost every motorcycle manufacturer worldwide attempted to join in, some with disastrous consequences
The almost instant impact and overnight success of the Vespa and Lambretta took the two-wheeled market by surprise. It may have taken a year or two for both companies to establish themselves but once they did the competition was left in their wake. The scooter concept had been tried before and failed; the public not being ready for such a design. However, after the Second World War things were different, and the idea of cheap, economical transport now had far greater appeal. Both Piaggio and Innocenti wasted no time messing around and, with each having established factories, they found it easy to switch production to something different.
The early designs needed development but as sales began to grow this allowed both brands to move forward at a rapid pace. By the early 1950s, they had done just that, and the scooter was here to stay. The problem which the rest of the two-wheeled industry now had was just how much of the market these two companies would take from them. In fear of the new competition, there was only one answer... to take them on and manufacture their own scooters. To start off with it was the smaller European manufacturers who tried their luck, but it soon became apparent the idea of building a scooter wasn’t as easy as it looked. The problem came down to design and what you had to work with in the first place.
Piaggio and Innocenti had started from scratch, not only developing a chassis but also an engine to sit in it and by doing it this way, had designed an engine that suited the layout. For companies that already had an engine design, the idea was to build a scooter around it. The problem was that engine was suited to a motorcycle frame and trying to build a scooter-styled chassis around it was a much more difficult task to get right. Both the Vespa and Lambretta engines were compact, and comprised the top-end transmission and gearbox in one single unit. An engine that had separate transmission and an exposed chain wasn’t going to work as well with enclosed bodywork around it, the basic concept of scooter design.
What you began to see were machines that looked like a cross between a motorbike and a scooter jumbled together. This meant that the classic lines created on a Vespa and Lambretta couldn’t be equalled and some of the creations looked a bit odd, to say the least. There were a few who got it right but their resemblance to what Piaggio and Innocenti were creating was all too clear to see. Even then the designs looked a bit like the poor man’s choice and there was no way they could be considered a threat to the dominance which both the Italian manufacturers had created.
As time wore on that dominance grew even stronger and the big manufacturers had no choice but to be drawn into the scooter boom. The problem with the engine choice already mentioned only got worse as many of them were too big to fit into the design. Soon enough there were huge oddly shaped machines wrapped around the engines they were trying to hide. Not only were these machines heavy and cumbersome but it meant handling became a huge problem. That paled into insignificance when it came to maintenance, with some examples needing the panel work unbolting just to access the spark plug.
Another option was to take an existing engine and fit it into the scooter design. The most common one by far was the Villiers engine and at one point any vaguely based scooter effort coming out of Britain had one fitted. They were slightly more compact so it allowed the styling of the bodywork to be better but there was another problem. The Vespa and Lambretta engines were undergoing constant development and become more powerful and better each year, whereas those using a donor engine such as the Villiers had to stick with what they had. This meant the engine was soon outdated with no chance of improvement.
All these things combined to make almost every attempt at being part of the scooter market destined for failure. In the process, depending on the resources spent, it signalled huge financial losses for many companies – some they never got over. Velocette, the renowned motorcycle manufacturer, blamed its bankruptcy on the Viceroy scooter that it had launched starving the company of cashflow as sales of it flopped. What it proved was in the quest to sell more machines, many companies were outside of their comfort zone and it showed. Instead of leaving the scooter trade alone and concentrating on what they did best, many tripped up with some spectacular two-wheeled disasters.
For many companies, it was the worry of ‘fear of missing out’ when they should have left well alone. By the time many joined in it was too late anyway as Piaggio and Innocenti had tightened their grip on the scooter market so much there was no room for any other contenders. It was a case of trying to jump on to the lucrative scooter bandwagon – but unfortunately for most, they simply fell straight off it.