TV IMPERIAL DEALER SPECIAL REPLICA
ROB’S LML SHOW WINNER
ISSUE 91
BSSO
EXCITEMENT JUNE/JULY 2013
LITTLE
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE
MOTO RUMI FORMICHINO
HUNGARIAN APE
TYRE WORDING
EXPLAINED
BACK TO MODS
HAYNES MANUAL SEE INSIDE
EDDY GRIMSTEAD
T H E F U L L U N T O L D S T O R Y. . . NO.91 JUNE/JULY 2013
£3.60
EXCLUSIVE
RALLIES REVIEWS, NEWS, READERS’ SCOOTS... ...PLUS MUCH MORE
June/July 2013 Editor: Mau Spencer 01507 529408 Email: mauspencer@classicscooterist.com Group production editor: Tim Hartley Publisher: Steve Rose Contributors: Rich Addison; Henry Byer; Paul Carr; Dave Dry; Brian Forde; Paul Hart; Kingy; Ashley Lenton; Paul Martin; Pete Newbold; Phillip Tooth; Steve Wright. Apologies to anyone we’ve forgotten. Some of the articles within these pages express the opinions of the contributors and are not necessarily those of Scooterist Scene. Design: Sarah Scrimshaw Reprographics: Simon Duncan Divisional advertising manager: Sandra Fisher sfisher@mortons.co.uk Advertising: Zoe Thurling 01507 529464 zthurling@mortons.co.uk Subscription manager: Paul Deacon Circulation manager: Steve O’Hara Marketing manager: Charlotte Park Production manager: Craig Lamb Publishing director: Dan Savage Commercial director: Nigel Hole Associate director: Malc Wheeler Managing director: Brian Hill Editorial address: CLASSIC SCOOTERIST MAGAZINE PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6LZ www.scooteristscene.com General queries and back issues: 01507 529529 (24hr answerphone) Archivist: Jane Skayman 01507 529423 jskayman@mortons.co.uk Next issue published: July 17, 2013 Editorial deadline: June 18, 2013 CLASSIC SCOOTERIST (ISSN:1756-9494) is published bi-monthly by Mortons Media Group Ltd, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6LZ UK . USA subscriptions are $36 per year from Motorsport Publications LLC, 7164 Cty Rd N #441, Bancroft WI 54921. Periodical Postage is paid at Wisconsin Rapids, WI. Postmaster: Send address changes to CLASSIC SCOOTERIST, Motorsport Publications LLC, 7164 Cty Rd N #441, Bancroft WI 54921. 715-572-4595 Email: chris@classicbikebooks.com www.classicbikebooks.com Distribution: COMAG Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QE USA subscriptions: $36 per year (Six bi-monthly issues) available from Motorsport, 31757 Honey Locust Road, Jonesburg MO 63351-9600m USA Periodicals postage is paid at Jonesburg MO. Tel. 636-488-3113. Fax 636-488-3196 Printed by: William Gibbons & Sons, Wolverhampton © Mortons Media Group. All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced without prior written permission.
Independent publisher since 1885 Member of the Professional Publishers' Association Having trouble finding a copy of this magazine? Why not Just Ask your local newsagent to reserve you a copy each month?
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CLASSIC SCOOTERIST – JUNE/JULY 2013
22 Graham Fisher's ‘Little Ant’
40 A tribute of Imperial proportions 44 Szabolcs – the Hungarian Ape
48 Rob Mee’s LML
62 Exciting season opener at Croft
It’s that time again Time seems to have shot by – it only seems a couple of weeks ago since I was completing the last issue. I’ve been so busy that I must put my hands up and say that I hadn’t even had time to check my scooters over properly before I got them out of the shed for the start of the 2013 season. My ‘shed’ is to the rear of my property and getting the scooters out involves riding down a muddy farm track. It’s not so bad in summer when the weather’s good, but it can be a pretty interesting exercise in winter, or if there’s been heavy rain. It’s like going scooter scrambling! Putting them away is even harder, as it’s slightly uphill and I have on more than one occasion had to walk alongside a bike with the
engine running in order to get the traction to return it from whence it came. Not everyone has the luxury of keeping their bikes in a locked garage on a nice driveway. Where do you keep yours? I’ve heard many tales about bikes being kept in kitchens, bedrooms, or somewhere else in the house. In fact I know of one person who turned their dining room into a shrine with it being completely curtained off, only for all to be revealed at some convenient point. The strangest one I’ve actually come across was of a Lambretta being kept in a top floor flat with the only access via a narrow, winding staircase. How did the owner get his scooter up there? He took the flat window out and hauled it up by rope and pulley!
What’s the strangest place that you’ve ever kept your scooter? Why not let us know – in fact, send us a photo to prove it and I might be inclined to offer a free subscription if I think it’s weird enough.
www.classicscooterist.com
26 Eddy Grimstead – the man behind the legend The full, previously untold story
Tyres – what the sidewall 58 The boys are back in town! 70 wording means
82 The curious tale of the SX150s
9 What’s new?
44 Szabolcs
68 Grasstracker revival
15 Rated or hated?
48 Tales of the riverbank
70 Tyres
17 Mailbox
51 Rallies and rideouts
72 Scooter clubs
58 Talkin’ ’bout My Generation
73 Club news
62 Exciting season opener at Croft
74 What’s going on?
40 A tribute of Imperial proportions
64 Excitement and disappointment at Santa Pod
77 Scooterist classifieds
42 Back in the day
66 Win a Haynes Lambretta manual
IN DETAIL
The latest gossip and gadgets New products on test
Readers express their views, ask questions and show us their pictures
22 Graham Fisher’s ‘Little Ant’
1955 Moto Rumi first production model
26 The Eddy Grimstead story
The man, shops, staff and machines Nigel Hetherington’s Grimstead tribute Bringing back memories from the IoM
mauspencer@classicscooterist.com
The Hungarian Ape Rob Lee’s pristine LML
Event roundup
The adventures of Ska-ravan! Scooter circuit race report
Scooter sprinting update
In our free-to-enter competition
Ignition options explored
What does the sidewall wording mean? Meet and greet guide The latest club updates
A guide to the start of the riding season
For all your wants and needs
82 The curious tale of the SX150s Indian imports from Italy? What’s going on?
CLASSIC SCOOTERIST – JUNE/JULY 2013
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Love is a Many Splendoured Thing
THE SCOOTER RITE OF PASSAGE
‘LITTLE ANT’ Being small is not always an issue if you have a big heart. Graham Fisher, a scooterist for over 30 years also practises martial art, karate. He knows all too well that it’s nothing to do with size how well something performs.
G
raham Fisher has restored his Moto Rumi Formichino 125cc twin air-cooled scooter to immaculate condition. It’s a 1955 first production run model which makes it a very rare specimen indeed – but owning approx 45 other bikes, Graham could be said to be spoilt for choice when it comes to going out for a sunny Sunday afternoon ride. Moto Rumi’s Formichino is perhaps the one motor scooter widely respected by motorcyclists – probably because it can burn the pants off many 250cc motorcycles of the same era with its horizontal two-cylinder two-
mauspencer@classicscooterist.com
stroke 125cc engine. A masterpiece of scooter design, Rumi’s Formichino (Little Ant) arrived in 1954 and progressed via Normale and Lusso versions to the Sport and Bol d’Or racer. Its competitors on the market might have been designed with cost-effectiveness and simplicity in mind, but Donnino Rumi started from first principle engineering with the Formichino, using the engine as a stressed chassis member, which was made up from aluminium castings bolted together. Out of production since the company’s closure in 1962, the Formichino is today one of the most highly sought after of all scooters.
Graham got into the scooter scene after going to Northern Soul nights in Peterborough back in 1978/79. He then started riding to rallies, his very first recollection being on the seafront at Scarborough in 1981. Travelling across the UK on his J registration orange GP150, he soon became a regular rallygoer. But he also has a love of riding abroad and although he enjoys going to the Isle of Wight Rally, he much prefers riding in France or Italy and meeting up with continental scooterists. One of his most enjoyable memories was riding to the south of France back in 2004 with fellow Rumi-riding scooterists – that’s hardcore riding on something like a Rumi. Racing scooter sidecars has been one of Graham’s other pastimes over the years, which brings us on to one of his funniest memories: While attending a grass meeting at a Brighton weekender and suffering repeated punctures on his Maicoletta outfit, he decided to use expanding foam in the tyres (the type you inject into walls) to combat his problems; he went on to win all his races, but with pain etched on his face. He said: “The bruising was unforgettable.”
CLASSIC SCOOTERIST – JUNE/JULY 2013
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EDDY GRIMSTEAD
THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND
Following the passing of one of the most colourful and flamboyant scooter characters of the 1960s, CSM has been granted exclusive access to the world of Eddy Grimstead. Read all about the man, the shops, the staff and, of course, the dealer specials.
E
ddy Grimstead was born on Sept 25, 1933 into a poor London East End family. Times were hard; a lack of sheets and blankets meant sleeping under coats for warmth in winter and the family house was sparse with just bare floorboards. There’s an old family story about young Eddy that revolves around his mum scrimping and saving to buy a roll of lino for the kitchen floor. Eddy (before the lino could be put to its proper use?) appropriated this new acquisition until his sister warned their mum to look out of the window where Eddy, playing out in the garden and using a broomstick for a horse, had cut up the new lino to make a knight’s suit of armour – times were hard, but not without humour! After a period in the army following his National Service, Eddy, then 21, opened his first shop. Inspiration came from his father, Eddy senior, who, alongside Eddy’s brother Peter, ran a cycle hire and sales shop in Beckton Road, Canning Town. This inspired Eddy to do the same with his first shop in Burdett Road, Poplar selling push bikes. As his father’s business expanded into mopeds, Eddy also followed this motorised route – who’d have guessed that the Eddy Grimstead estate would encompass seven shops, sell almost anything on wheels and become internationally renowned?
Eddy – pictured in later life
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CLASSIC SCOOTERIST – JUNE/JULY 2013
EARLY TIMES
The business became something of a family affair with many employees being related to the Grimstead family. Eddy’s cousin, Roger, ran one of the earliest Grimstead shops in Rancliffe Road. It was Roger’s ideas on scooter customising that was to seal the company’s legendary status. In fact, the idea of the Vespa Hurricane and the Lambretta Imperial were Roger’s brainchild and in the early days, Roger undertook much of the custom spraying, sometimes in very primitive conditions.
The cult of today is the culture of tomorrow From the outset the Grimstead organisation was an innovator and the Rancliffe Road shop boasted a Vespa sidecar outfit, known as ‘the float’ that was used to pick up breakdowns. Another inspired ‘one-off’ vehicle was a pickup style van that had been extended to facilitate carrying Lambrettas from the Lambretta Concessionaires in Croydon; its longer bed was to save journey times. All the welding for this pick-up was undertaken by the versatile and talented Roger.
NATIONAL RECOGNITION
Eddy Grimstead’s fame spread and by 1965 a national newspaper had featured Eddy alongside a picture of him sat on a scooter outside the Barking Road shop (modern readers might feel that some of this article is worth repeating): The scooter represents the contemporary young; in ways the symbol of how they feel about life. Eddy Grimstead owns two shops in the East End of London, where all the sharpest scooter fashions begin. He’s important because he customises all his scooters. A Grimstead scooter is not just a form of transport; it’s a fantastic object, glowing with rainbow colours; a new cult, with flashing wheel spokes, badges, symbols and stars sculpted in transparent red lacquer. The fur (look) goes everywhere. And you can cover the seat, pillion, tyre and pannier with zebra or – the latest – ocelot type skin. In front go the lights, you fit a large chrome frame and screw hundreds and hundreds of tiny spotlights on to this until your scooter looks like a floodlight stand for night football. You alter the exhaust note to get an exclusive sound (Grimstead sells a several dozen different types of silencer; connoisseurs can name each one after a single revving-up burst). On the side you can paste on to the shiny chrome bulging bosoms of your scooter a chequered
Eddy Grimstead also sold vehicles – here’s Eddy with Gill, the Reliant rep www.classicscooterist.com
Eddy Grimstead outside his Newbury Park shop
defender. And you can drive off with your elastic sided feet set at a 45º angle. Very important that 45º. Now much of this baroque flamboyance (which could add over £40 to the scooter cost) is beginning to move out of favour. “There’s a cool spirit abroad,” says Mr Grimstead; “The boys are beginning to pare things down, exposing the frame and engine to get spidery effects, going for purer matt colours with, perhaps, two asymmetrical stripes. Less of the chrome – a silent silencer – none of that megaphone nonsense – it was against the law anyway. “But we are getting some new accessory creations in. I saw a new design Japanese whiplash aerial this morning. It’s fitted with (Mr Grimstead casts his eyes modestly to the ground) a naked lady sculpted in plastic right on the very top.” Apart from Vespa and Lambrettas, Grimsteads sells Hondas. He drives a Mercedes Benz, not a British product. He stocks foreign products just in the way that television people hire Irishmen and Icelanders (presumably, a ‘dig’ at the BBC presenters Eamonn Andrews and Magnus Magnusson?) to avoid class associations and consequent antagonism. mauspencer@classicscooterist.com
“It’s funny the way scooters have caught on. I don’t have any anti-British prejudice – did you know that the scooter was a British invention? We just didn’t carry it through – but it just happens that the Italians and the Japs have moved, they haven’t stuck still. And there’s an anti-scooter Puritanism in this country. I have this uncle working in my dad’s motorbike shop – he just won’t touch scooters. He’d resign before working on one. Scooters are decadent, or something? “I admit, I understand the feeling, sometimes. There’s a mechanical beauty to a motorbike, functional – not all smoothed over. But there’s no doubt that the scooter has won. The boys feel that it’s not a dirty great machine, not working class, the way bikes are. “It’s funny the way that the scooter expresses how people are now interested in smooth appearance rather than the guts. “The cult of today is the culture of tomorrow”. I told Mr Grimstead that he looked as though he would be a culture hero. “Good heavens!” he said. A superb survival of a nice period piece including elusive quotes from the man himself.
Douglas Vespa MD, Eric Brockway with Eddy
MANY THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING for helping to put this article together: John Chinrey Marco Faccini Roger Grimstead Steve Groves Malcolm Perrett
CLASSIC SCOOTERIST – JUNE/JULY 2013
27
I can’t explain
The dodgy-looking serial numberplate
A Series 2 back leg is fitted – alongside a very dodgy HT lead
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE IMPORTED SX150s
At first glance these two SX 150 Lambrettas could pass as normal Italian imports, but delve deeper and things become a little more confused.
W
hen Nigel Miller purchased two SX 150 Lambrettas from a batch of five scooters imported from Italy, he didn’t realise how deep a mystery he was about to become involved with – because to all intents and purposes the scooters appear to actually be Indian! The first clue came via the serial numbers which weren’t stamped into the frame where you’d expect to find them, but instead they are on a registration plate fitted in between the fuel cap and the seat securing plate. To further confuse matters, the engine numbers themselves (SX150-752945 and SX150-752876) indicate their year of origin as 1966, whereas the frame numbers shown on the silver one indicate to it being of 1968 origin, and the black one as being 1969. Whatever the answer, all of this indicates to the actual year of manufacture being preScooters India ‘SIL’ ownership (if they were of SIL origin, they would be post-1971). However, there are lots of signs of ‘Indian tampering’ which includes clues like the fitting of a Series 2
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CLASSIC SCOOTERIST – JUNE/JULY 2013
rear footboard support strut, an upside-down kick-start stop and the fitting of a dodgy HT lead among many other dubious build qualities. The list goes on: glass fibre mudguards, panels (and even the toolbox), as well as strange-looking footboards and panel handles. Even the model badges aren’t consistent between these two scoots. The horncastings and headlights are pure Italian Innocenti, though one is an earlier style pattern and the other much later. All five scooters in the Italian imported batch show signs of being from the same production run with the frame numbers all appearing to be within 200 digits of each other. The number span also appears to indicate that there may have been an original batch of around 400 scooters, so was this a special oneoff batch order for someone – or even a special run? Or could it be that these bikes were made up out of ‘new old stock’ which was transferred to India when Innocenti sold out to SIL? Or is there some other (and possibly even stranger) explanation? We don’t know – do you? Mau
Star of India maybe?
The steering lock indicates mid-60s Italian origin
The toolbox door lock indentation is different to a normal Innocenti one
Kick-start stop is welded-on upside down www.classicscooterist.com