For those not in the know, a chap by the name of Vittorio Tessera is the man behind the Casa Lambretta range of Lambretta spare parts. The Scooter Museum near Milan is also his doing, and that contains a whole load of Innocenti related machines and archive, much of it on loan from the Innocenti family. In a nutshell, Mr Tessera is both very fortunate and very important. Casa Lambretta have recently opened a new Facebook page and are posting a few archive images on it to get us all drooling.
First up are these images which were first seen in public back in 2007 as part of a rather splendid magazine article (with other unseen images) written by Andy Gillard celebrating 60 years of Lambretta. So as a taster to both that and Casa Lambretta’s new page, here’s the story…
This shot shows a TV175 Series 1 with a prototype headset that was presumably designed to house both a speedo and a mechanical rev-counter, although for this mock-up Innocenti engineers have fitted two 120kph speedometers. What is interesting is that the scooter is a fairly early example of a Lambretta TV1, judging by the lever adjusters on the handlebars and horncast which still has an integral grille. This could suggest a few things:
1: That Innocenti realised the TV was so bad from the beginning that they immediately began working on updates for it.
2: That Innocenti thought the TV Series 1 would do so well they immediately began designing an even sportier version of it for the future.
3: That Innocenti were so far ahead that they began working on the Series 2 before the LI Series 1 had even hit the market.
4: That Innocenti simply had an old TV Series 1 lying around gathering dust and so that became the guinea pig for designers.
Whatever the reason, these are some interesting photographs indeed and yet another opportunity to say ‘what if’…
That’s very interesting!