Tribal Loyalty

There was a time – before scooters became soulless plastic whirligigs with Bluetooth and shame – when a proper two-stroke machine was more than transport. It was identity. It was rebellion. And in some towns, it was practically religion.

Because let’s be clear – you didn’t just ride a scooter. You chose sides. Vespa or Lambretta. There was no middle ground. No ecumenical council for Mod unity. Your town either bent its knee to the Church of Piaggio or kept the faith with Innocenti.

Southport? Lambretta, through and through. Why? Because the local scooter oracle – aka my best mate’s dad – ran the emporium on Duke Street. And when the high priest of two-stroke tuning speaks, you listen. If you turned up on a Vespa, he might sell you a tin of oil, but he’d do it with the sort of expression normally reserved for unhousebroken dogs.

My own initiation came at sixteen, still serving time at HMS Conway – the school, not the ship – where discipline, maritime tradition, and creative rule-bending were honed in equal measure. That’s where I bought my first scooter: an LI125, from a cadet who lived in Beaumaris and used it to sneak home at weekends.

He kept it stashed in the woods like a Cold War fugitive. It had a certain aura about it. Frankly, it probably had belonged to a Druid. You could imagine it being wheeled between standing stones during a solstice, reeking of two-stroke and mysticism.

I handed over £30 – a princely sum when you’re living off powdered egg and institutional gruel – and suddenly I was a scooterist.

Come the end of term, my parents turned up to fetch me. I declined the lift. I had a machine. They drove home, doubtless wondering when exactly they’d lost control of the narrative, while I roared off across Wales with the sort of blind confidence only teenagers and hedge fund managers possess.

Four and a half hours later, I pulled into Southport. The scooter didn’t miss a beat. No breakdowns, no fried electrics, not even a dropped bolt. It was like riding a miracle powered by Castrol R and sheer bloody-mindedness.

Of course, being sixteen and possessed of all the patience of a Labrador on Red Bull, I immediately had it rebored to 150. And, naturally, couldn’t be bothered to run it in properly. It seized up repeatedly – usually at the worst possible moments – but I treated that as character building.

That first scooter was a gateway drug. I briefly defected to a Vespa – a youthful indiscretion, like folk music or lentils – but it never felt right. A Vespa was too… civilised.

Then came the SX225. Arctic White and English Electric Blue. Exquisite. It had once belonged to my best mate – yes, that mate whose dad owned the local scooter emporium on Duke Street – and it purred like a well-fed leopard. Tuned, polished, admired, feared. It didn’t just get me noticed – it got me worshipped.

It wasn’t always obedient. It once tried to throw me into a hedge. But that was part of the deal. Lambrettas weren’t pets – they were feral companions. You didn’t own one. You entered into a pact.

Today’s kids don’t get it. They’ve got e-scooters that whimper when it rains and won’t even start without a postcode and parental consent.

Back then, a scooter didn’t just move you. It meant something. It was heritage. It was rebellion. It was a lifestyle involving mirrors, parkas, and the distinct possibility of third-degree burns.

Lambretta or Vespa?

No contest. Not in Southport. Not when your best mate’s dad was the Lambretta Pope of Duke Street.

And not when your first scooter had probably been blessed under a full moon by someone in a robe.