The Lambretta and Vespa era in India

 

Photo by Tim Gouw: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-piaggio-vespa-motor-scooter-parked-beside-gray-and-red-concrete-building-240222/

Middle-class India has long gotten used to cars in all sizes and shapes. In that sense, the country has become like any other nation around the world with a large middle-class population possessing a fair amount of disposable income. Of course, millions are too poor to afford cars, but there are millions who can (India is number three in the world in vehicle sales after China and the U.S.). But there was a time not all that long ago when most of middle-class India would only dream of owning cars.

So, what did the middle class drive? A few of them who could do so would drive the bulky and almost vintage Ambassador and Fiat cars, while the rest rode two popular Italian brands. Lamborghini and Ferrari? Nah! They rode scooters-Lambretta and Vespa!

Those of you who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s would remember them well. The Lambretta was the bigger and more stately two-wheeler and could accommodate a family of four. This would comprise the one manning the controls, the pillion rider, the bigger child seated on a steel carrier behind the spare wheel at the tail end of the scooter and a small child standing on the footboard in the front placing his hands on the handlebar between the father’s hands that held the ends.

The Vespa was the quicker scooter though smaller in size. It was also easier to kick start when compared to the Lambretta, which was harder to operate and came with a recoil. The Vespa was a family vehicle too, but would rarely see four people riding it at the same time-though three people was quite commonplace. People would not just commute to work but often go on long rides across hundreds of kilometres, often to other towns and cities.

There was a veritable boom in the scooter industry with every middle-class Indian worth their name wanting to own a Bajaj scooter a homegrown brand very similar to the Vespa, which it replaced. Over the years, it launched many popular models like Bajaj Chetak, Bajaj Super and Baja Priya. The Lambretta similarly got replaced by Vijay Super. In later years, towards the 1990s Vespa made a comeback with its LML Vespa range of scooters. Honda introduced the first gearless scooter in India in collaboration with an Indian company Kinetic, marking a watershed in the evolution of the scooter industry in India.

Scooters in the ’70s, ’80s and even ’90s were two-stroke geared affairs, providing a fair amount of power and the pick-up too was good. The noise levels were high too, but nobody seemed to mind. They were easy to repair and anybody could deal with starting trouble by tilting the scooter to its side or sometimes by cleaning the spark plug! That was what seems like a lifetime ago. Everything about India was different back then in the sense that life was laid back, but people had more time for each other. No one was in a conspicuous consumption race leading to nowhere.

We are in a different age now-the digital age. Let’s hope it leads us to an era better than the Lambretta and Vespa era!