History
of Gas Scooters
The
first patents for scooters go back as far as 1921. The Razor
scooter was later developed by Gino Tsai in Shanghai, Taiwan
and became an instant hit with the public. It didnt take long
for motor scooter popularity to expand all over the globe.
Even
before 1950 there were as many as 110,000 scooters on the
road in Italy alone. It has been just a little over 50 years
since the Vespa-Douglas Corporation in the UK sold their first
gas scooters. The Douglas corporation was on the verge of
bankruptcy when they first began selling their gas
scooters. It was a big hit at the 1950 Motorcycle Show
and saved the company from possible financial ruin.
From
1950 to 1958 Vespa sold over 125,000 of their gas powered
scooters in the UK. Why the great success? During this period
the European countries didn't have a great deal of money
and there was not much gas available to the public. Due to
the scarcity of gasoline and the high gas mileage of the gas
motor scooter it's popularity quickly escalated.
It
didnt take long for the Italian models (the Piaggio from Vespa
and the Lambretta from Innocenti) to branch out to other countries.
In France they became so popular the French tried to get in
on the boom by manufacturing their own. By the early to mid
1950s the sale of gas scooters climbed to about 1 million
a year in France alone.
Other
countries wanted to profit from the newest craze and tried
to climb on the band wagon. While some were successful others
were not. Germany began to manufacture larger touring models,
but this did not satisfy the public in the way the smaller,
cheaper and more fuel-efficient models from Italy and France
did. These smaller models were extremely popular in the European
market.
Tourist
Scooters Manufacturers in Germany built some very strong and
powerful versions and were the first to install electric starters.
These larger versions were great for traveling, touring and
even racing, but were not as popular as the smaller, cheaper,
more efficient models used for traveling shorter distances
around town.
Vespa
began marketing a couple of very popular gas powered scooters
from Piaggio, the GS 125cc and the GS 150cc. These were improved
versions of the earlier models for several reasons. The biggest
reason is probably because the heavy gear mechanism rods were
replaced by smaller and lighter cables.
France's
Roussey Scooters tried to one-up the Italian competition by
coming out with a 175cc model. These were very nice vehicles
and included the first water-cooled engines along with other
new features, but because it had a pull-start it could not
compete with the newer models from Italy that were already
offering versions with electric starts.
As
these wonderful vehicles have evolved over the years they
have become increasingly more popular all over the world.
Today they are everywhere. They are cheap to purchase, economical
to operate, and are very handy and functional. These are not
toys and are genuinely a lot of fun to ride. There are electric,
gas powered, foldable, mobility and utility scooters.
The
electric types are often used by kids and teens, but are also
popular with the elderly and handicapped. Models for the handicapped
are usually called mobility scooters. Folding varieties can
be folded up and conveniently stored under desks, in closets
or in other tiny areas and utility types are used for many
different purposes. They are more popular than go karts, mini
bikes or go carts. Scooters, sometimes called mopeds or go
peds, are very functional, convenient and are here to stay.
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