This weekend saw the doors open for ScooterExpo, an event that had been eight months in the planning, although in my mind for a fair bit longer than that.
While I may have first considered the concept of a new scooter event prior to launching ScooterNova magazine back in 2017, it couldn’t have happened without the help of my friend Iggy at ScooterLab UK. After sharing ideas of an event organised by the both of us, we sat down at the end of 2018 to discuss the potential, various suggestions, and after he came up with the venue, ScooterExpo was born – the first joint event by ScooterNova magazine and SLUK.
Fast forward to 28 July 2019 and at 10am we opened the ScooterExpo doors to the public. It had been a goal to showcase the best that the British scooter scene past and present had to offer, and I couldn’t help feel a lump in my throat looking at all we had achieved. Quality scooters plus respected scooter traders, sited in plenty of space over two halls.
A full review will of course appear in edition 15 of ScooterNova magazine, together with plenty of photographs over numerous pages depicting many of the 100 scooters entered in all their glory. I think in the end we had 96 scooters on display, although on the day I stated 98. But what’s a couple among friends, hey?
How they arrived didn’t matter, it was an exhibition not a trial of endurance. That said plenty of entrants rode to the venue in Alfreton, Derbyshire in some terribly wet conditions. Glyn Dove rode Pseudo Satisfaction up from Essex and must have been the farthest travelled drowned rat, with Duane from Watford on his stretched 12″ wheeled Lambretta from Watford a close second. Ian battled through flooded stretches of the A38 on his gorgeous Lambretta Rallymaster and sidecar to get there, the Rossi Vespa, Sign of the Snake and DTC New Breed were all ridden down from Yorkshire, with a bucket-load of credit to Tim Lovell on The Greatest Love of All who, with help from Chiselspeed, repaired his Vespa T5 custom that he blew up only days earlier on the ride home from Llandudno scooter rally.
The scooters displayed ranged from a rare 1949 Douglas badged Vespa to brand new custom scooters never seen before, debuting at ScooterExpo. Choppers, restos, racers, rustos, cutdowns, full-blown customs, engineered machines and a line-up of classics through the years. What was from a personal point of view was to see the amount of quality scooters that have previously appeared on the pages of ScooterNova magazine, all being exhibited in one place.
Dave Dickinson (DDK) spent the day demonstrating his airbrush skills by painting the forthcoming cover of ScooterNova edition 15 live at the show, while Slacker pin-striped in the other hall. Sponsors Lexham and Putoline both reported successful days, as did the others traders we had supporting the event.
We reckon there were around 1500 people in attendance throughout the day, many braving the rain on scooters – thank you one and all. Would we do it again? Never say never, but nothing has been confirmed as yet. Would we change anything? Probably; there were a couple of things that weren’t quite right on the day, a few areas needed tweaking, but thanks to a fine bunch of friends that helped out from Saturday set-up to Sunday breakdown, the response from exhibitors, traders and visitors alike has been hugely positive; thank you one and all.
As for trophies, ScooterExpo wasn’t about chasing tin-ware. All the scooters invited to take part in ScooterExpo were winners for the simple fact of being there. If you were, you were part of something rather fabulous.
You can pre-order edition 15 of ScooterNova here and there is a gallery of further images from ScooterExpo below. More pictures will of course feature in edition 15 of ScooterNova magazine.
** We have a handful of ScooterExpo rally patches leftover, if anyone forgot to buy one at the weekend you can do so from here.
Likewise, if you didn’t pick up a souvenir programme on the day, or would like to see what you missed out on, click HERE to buy a copy.
**ScooterNova magazine is an independent publication, produced by scooterists for scooterists. It is published bi-monthly on quality paper, with credible articles written by fellow riders. Available from all good scooter shops or mail order via subscription, for more details visit the magazine’s website. Image
