Following on from our previous post…
The owner and creator of this scooter was one Bryn Owen from Market Bosworth near Leicester. His humble Vespa 50 Special (apparently fitted with a 100cc engine, presumably to carry the excess weight of the accessories!) created quite a stir back in the early 1980s, with first the Leicester Mercury, then the national press picking up on the story of him and his scooter.
It wasn’t long before the bright lights of London called by way of the BBC too, as many a young Mod/ scooterist may well recall from those days.
You can read more of Bryn’s story here on the Mercury’s website.
A quick trawl of the internet and we also came up with this bit of footage of Bryn and his Vespa on BBC TV’s Blue Peter show back in the 1980s.
Enjoy…
Hi, nice to see the pics of my old Vespa, to answer the questions asked in part 1, I had a bit of an incident just after the Blue Peter appearance and managed to stick the Vespa in a ditch, I got it home in bits and it was laid up a while as I also had a PX125 by then. I eventually got round to a rebuild bigger and better than before and used a fixed lammie mudguard on the front so I could hang even more gear on it, I then sold it to a young lad who being 16 needed a 50cc motor in it, so I did a swap with my brothers 50cc motor, as you can imagine, it was painfully slow with that fitted. I remember selling it for £1,000 which at the time was crazy, I went out and bought a decnt car and had £750 change! I didn’t see the scooter again, I heard within a very short space of time the new owner had stripped it all down and it seems it came off the road very soon after so was probably scrapped. I took a long break from scooters but pleased to say I ride again now and have a few classics… But I don’t do chrome any more! 🙂
Hello Bryn, thanks for taking the time to write a reply to our blog post and complete the story.
Ps feel free to email some photos of you and your scooters today and we’ll post a blog to share them around. Info@scooternova.com
Being american mod style scooters just aren’t seen here. I do love the style. Forgive a silly question but how did you run all those lights and keep your battery charged?
you don’t! 😉