featured scooter

MARSHY'S french Lambretta LD
 

The very first Lambretta LDs appeared about 1953, and were little more than D types with covers added. They were all 125cc, and the engines retained some of the primitive features of the earlier C and LC types.

Steve Marsh, not shy of a challenge, decided to completely restore his French Lambretta LD back to its former glory. Now this kind of story isn't new you only have to open a Scootering magazine to see the latest nut and bolt restoration in fact its big business with big bucks! The only difference with Steve doing a French LD is that there aint a ready supply of Italian, Indian, Spanish or reppro parts available and more importantly French LD experts are a little thin on the ground!

Very few details of French made Lambretta's exist, even the lambretta Club of France have very little documentation of their history.

It is thought that the French factory in Troyes only ever produced the D and Ld models of Lambretta, and although very similar, they had their differences from the Italian produced examples.
 

Most notably, were fuel taps and choke levers that were in the same position as 'normal' later model Lambretta's, i.e. they protruded through near the floorboards where the riders feet were.

Fuel tanks were also offset on LD models, instead of the central position like on later Italian models, making them much easier to fill up! A small plate between the fuel and choke levers, wore the Troyes factory badge.

Many of the later models found their way to the UK market, as the Italian market wound up production of the LD to make way for the new series one Lambretta's, the UK market needed to keep up with the huge demand for Lambretta, and so turned to the French models to meet the demand.
 

It was thought years ago by some members of the French Lambretta Club, that the factory stopped producing Lambretta's around 1958, but in fact UK documentation proved that the French were still supplying models as late as November 1960
 

The transformation from start to finish is absolutely amazing. The whole process was wracked with problems both finding and repairing parts, one particular engine part could not be removed for some time as a Lambretta extracting tool for this part and model was not available! The restoration is now complete and Marshy now owns a real piece of Lambretta history
 

MENU