Who or what does Lambretta stand for today?
By Astrid Bidanec

The Italian motor scooter legend, Lambretta, has been kept alive by vintage lovers since the company stopped production in 1971. Naturally, the lack of new Lambretta scooters has turned these old timers into invaluable treasures. Needless to say, the excitement over the recently announced newly manufactured Lambretta models was great all over the world. Lambretta fans prepared for test drives just to experience a huge disappointment: The new Lambrettas were not really Lambrettas at all. They appeared to be merely Taiwanese Adly Moto scooters with the Lambretta label slapped on.

 The confusion spread like a wild fire and avid scooter lovers dug into the history of the company and any recent business transactions to shed light onto this mystery. Did someone simply steal the highly respected Lambretta label in order to trick clueless consumers into buying a much lower valued scooter? Or was another business scheme at work here?

By following the bread crumbs, it soon became clear that the trade name Lambretta had changed hands not long after the company folded in the early 70’s. The British Motor Company (BMC) was the proud owner for a limited time without utilizing it for any new scooter productions. Instead they sold the Lambretta name to a clothing line owner who still uses it today.

BMC apparently bought a dose of bad luck along with the Lambretta name and sold out after long industrial strikes. The Indian government bought the factory along with the brand name due to the lack of infrastructure in India and turned it into Scooters India Ltd. They produced scooters until 1998 and now only have a truck with the Lambretta engine left in their product line.

Not long after the scooter production came to a halt, Scooter India sold the Lambretta rights to Her Chaa, the owner of a motor scooter company in Taiwan. Interestingly, Her Chaa already had motor scooters on the world market that were reliable, but rather cheap in comparison to the original high-end Lambretta models.

In an attempt to hide the new identity behind the well respected Lambretta name, Chaa launched Lambretta International and announced the release of the new Lambretta models specifically designed and built for the US market, while his original Taiwanese company disclosed no official or unofficial ties to this endeavor.