Lambretta rides into the Indian sunset along with Scooters India

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ The year was 1947. India got independence and in faraway Milan, Italy, the Lambretta — a new scooter –rolled out. The events were completely unrelated but a quarter of a century later, in 1972, when the Milan facility folded up, the Indian government bought its remnants and brought them to India to establish Scooters India.

The Lucknow-based PSU continued to produce the Lambretta and its Indian sibling, the Vijai Super, for another quarter of a century. The idea was to meet the rising demand for private personal transport in a free nation. Centuries of colonisation had sapped the Indian economy of its riches and cars were not an option.

Scooters were. And so began the Indian middle-classes’ tryst with what had been a truly global scooter. By the time it landed in India, the Lambretta had a French connection, Italian (aeronautical) designers, American origins and was being manufactured across half the globe from Brazil to Vietnam.