Innocenti Lambretta

History

In 1922, Ferdinando Innocenti of Pescia built a steel-tubing factory in Rome. In 1931, he took the business to Milan where he built a larger factory producing seamless steel tubing and employing about 6,000. During the Second World War, the factory was heavily bombed and destroyed. It is said that surveying the ruins, Innocenti saw the future of cheap, private transport and decided to produce a motor scooter – competing on cost and weather protection against the ubiquitous motorcycle.

Concept

The main stimulus for the design style of the Lambretta and Vespa dates back to Pre-WWII Cushman scooters made in Nebraska, USA. These olive green scooters were in Italy in large numbers, ordered originally by Washington as field transport for the Paratroops and Marines. The US military had used them to get around Nazi defence tactics of destroying roads and bridges in the Dolomites (a section of the Alps) and the Austrian border areas.

Aeronautical engineer General Corradino D'Ascanio, responsible for the design and construction of the first modern helicopter by Agusta, was given the job by Ferdinando Innocenti of designing a simple, robust and affordable vehicle. It had to be easy to drive for both men and women, be able to carry a passenger and not get its driver's clothes soiled.

The design

D'Ascanio, who hated motorbikes, designed a revolutionary vehicle. It was built on a spar frame with a handlebar gear change and the engine mounted directly onto the rear wheel. The front protection "shield" kept the rider dry and clean in comparison to the open front end on motorcycles. The pass-through leg area design was geared towards women, as wearing dresses or skirts made riding conventional motorcycles a challenge. The front fork, like an aircraft's landing gear, allowed for easy wheel changing. The internal mesh transmission eliminated the standard motorcycle chain, a source of oil, dirt and aesthetic misery. This basic design allowed a series of features to be deployed on the frame which would later allow quick development of new models.

However, General D'Ascanio fell out with Innocenti, who rather than a moulded and beaten spar frame wanted to produce his frame from rolled tubing, allowing him to revive both parts of his prewar company. General D'Ascanio disassociated himself with Innocenti and took his design to Enrico Piaggio who produced the spar-framed Vespa from 1946 on.

Into production

Taking a year longer to produce, the 1947 Lambretta featured a rear pillion seat for a passenger or optionally a storage compartment. The original front protection "shield" was a flat piece of aero metal; later this developed in to a twin skin to allow additional storage on the 'back of'/behind the front shield, similar to the glove compartment in a car. The fuel cap was underneath the (hinged) seat which saved the cost of an additional lock on the fuel cap or need for additional metal work on the smooth skin.

Deriving the name Lambretta from the small river Lambro in Milan, which ran near to the factory, Innocenti started production of Lambretta scooters in 1947 - the year after Piaggio started production of its Vespa models. Lambrettas were manufactured under licence in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India and Spain, sometimes under other names but always to a recognizable design (e.g. Siambretta in South America and Serveta in Spain).

BLMC closure of Innocenti

As wealth increased in Western Europe in the late 1960s, the demand for motor scooters fell as the small car became available to more people and Lambretta started to struggle financially as did parent Innocenti. The British Leyland Motor Corporation took advantage of Innocenti's financial difficulties as well as their production and engineering expertise and contracted Innocenti to produce cars under licence from BLMC. The Innocenti Mini used the mechanical components of the original but was in many ways superior to it.

Innocenti/Lambretta was eventually sold to BLMC. Unfortunately, lack of foresight had caused BLMC to join a fashion trend that was ending rapidly. Long industrial strikes in BLMC ensued; motor-scooter sales took a nosedive, and both Innocenti and Lambretta shut up shop in 1972.

India

The Indian government bought the factory for essentially the same reasons that Ferdinando Innocenti had built it after the War. India was a country with poor infrastructure, economically not ready for small private cars yet with a demand for private transport.

Automobile Products of India (API) began assembling Innocenti-built Lambretta scooters in India after independence. They eventually acquired a licence to build the Li150 series 2 model, which was sold under the Lamby brand name for legal reasons. API continued to build Lambretta-derived models until the 1980s but have been non-operational since 2002.

In 1972, Scooters India Ltd. (SIL) a state-run enterprise based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, bought the entire manufacturing rights for the last Innocenti Lambretta model, the GP 150. Production began a couple of years later. The first model launched was sold as the Vijay Delux/DL, despite SIL owning the rights to the Lambretta name which was only used on exported models. The Vijay was later enhanced and sold as the Vijay Super. Further improvements were made in the final years of production by incorporating contemporary Japanese technology. SIL also distributed CKDs that were assembled in different parts of India and sold as the Allwyn Pusphak and Karnataka Falcon.

S.I.L. stopped producing scooters in 1998, but still manufacture limited spares for their Vijay/GP range of scooters. Their production now centres on the Vikram 3-wheeler, powered by a Lambretta engine.

Today

Scooters India in 2003 licensed Khurana Group USA LLC to manufacture and distribute scooters in the United States under the Lambretta brand. The first release in 2008 are rebadged Adly scoooters [8] of contemporary design, including a 49 cc DUE50, a 49 cc UNO50 and a 150 cc UNO150.

There are still clubs across Europe and the UK, both national and local clubs, devoted to the Lambretta scooter. The clubs still participate and organize ride outs and rallies which regularly take place during weekends over the summer months and have high attendance, some rallies achieve 2,500 paying rally goers. Across the UK there are many privately owned scooter shops which deal with everything Lambretta, from sales, services, parts, tuning, performance and complete nut and bolt restorations.

The Lambretta scooter is constantly growing in value; their rarity and increased demand means that a standard LI 150 series 3 (known as the standard scooter) in good condition will fetch over £3,000 ($5,950) whereas the rarer models of Lambretta e.g. the TV200 in mint condition has been sold for sums of up to £12,000 ($23,750).

In Brazil, “lambreta” is used as a synonym for “scooter”, being listed at the Novo Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, one of the country’s main dictionaries, as a noum/substantive.

The small village of Rodano, near Milan, hosts the biggest Lambretta museum in Europe and the Innocenti archives. In the collection are also several non-Lambretta scooters, including some first models from the 1910s and US Army scooters parachuted over Normandy in 1944. In Weston-super-Mare, England, there is a Lambretta Scooter Museum which houses a total of 61 Lambretta models - at least one from each year between October 1947 through to May 1971. It also houses a large amount of Lambretta memorabilia. This museum and collection was sold in early 2007 and re-opened on 8 August 2008 following refurbishment.

In 2010, the Lambretta name will make its return to World Championship Grand Prix racing and enter the MotoGP 125cc class with a bike to be ridden by Marco Ravaioli and a yet-to-be named team mate.