Anglia Scooters, Lowestoft

The scooter outlet is owned and run by Martyn Drake, and provides everything you’d want from a local business, including servicing and restoration.

Anglia Scooters has been operating for some years now, relocating to the current premises around four years ago. Under Martyn ‘Drakey’ Drake’s curatorship, the business evolved from his previous business, Anglia Fibreglass, albeit in a roundabout way, via Drakey collaborating with the late Steve Porter, aka Sausage, who ran a scooter business at the time.

As well as a well-known character on the scooter scene, and especially in the East Anglia region, Sausage was responsible for four instructional scooter DVDs over the years. One covered how to carry out repairs on Lambrettas and Vespas, whilst the other was dedicated to general maintenance on both marques.

Steve Porter’s son Michael has built a scooter, with the theme being a tribute to his late dad’s memory. Drakey went from running a fibreglass business in a relatively short period of time, to reaching where he is today with Anglia Scooters.

“Sadly Sausage got ill and died, poor sod, cutting a long story short, around three months after Sausage passed away his Missus decided to sell up his stock, his shop the lot. Which is how Anglia Scooters came about.”

How did you get started running a scooter outlet?

I first got into scooters during the 1980s. A good friend of mine, Sausage, of Sausage Speed fame, was running his scooter shop. I had a fibreglass company. We hooked up first of all when Sausage asked me to make a couple of one-off fibreglass parts for scooters. It wasn’t long after that before I was supplying him with fibreglass parts.

A few of the more popular ones that I made were one-piece fibreglass rear-end sections for racing scooters, one-off seats, and the one-piece Lammy front mudguard and horncasting combined. The latter were bought as soon as they were made, and fitted to both Lammys and Vespas. Sadly, Sausage became ill and died.

To cut a long story short, around three months after Sausage passed away, his missus decided to sell up, and that is how Anglia Scooters came about. We moved location to our current premises about four years ago.

We are close to VW restorers DubDaddy, which means that customers can turn up at Anglia Scooters for work on their Lambrettas and Vespas, and pop to the restorers if any bodywork repairs, restoration or paintwork is required.

One of many examples is the Art For Art Sake GS160, which was featured in Scootering a short while ago. It was painted by Dean at DubDaddy, and quite a large part of the floor needed serious attention. The vast majority of the rest of the work, including an engine rebuild, was carried out at Anglia Scooters.

There’s not much we can’t do. We carry most standard spares in stock, and if a specialist item is needed, we invariably can source it. We are authorised dealers for AF Rayspeed, SIP, Cambridge Lambretta, and most recently Scooter Centre Germany.

The work we do is a mixture of servicing, total restoration jobs, tuning, and setting up engines, including kitted and tuned ones. The Dyno helps with that, of course, as well as advising, physically working on and helping customers with their scooter projects.

People like to see their scooter progressing stage by stage, irrespective of what work they’re having done. With DubDaddy in such close proximity, there’s no problem for the customer to see what point their scooter has reached at any stage of the work being carried out.

Having mentioned your in-house Dyno, that leads us into your trick 221cc Malossi kitted Vespa. Tell us about Anglia Scooters’s 40+hp Vespa.

Very recently I squeezed 44hp out of that one. It’s got a Malossi MHR221 top end kit, with a long stroke crankshaft, along with a 38mm Dellorto oval slide carburettor. The revs peak at 9250rpm, and the power band kicks in at 3500 revs. It rides really nicely at 6000 revs in top gear, and purrs along at 60mph, plus there’s plenty of power on tap to call upon if required.

I ride ’bikes too, self-confessed two-wheeled nut that I am! When I get a real need for speed I’ve got a Fireblade. Getting 44hp with the 221cc Malossi Vespa is as far as I can take it.

I’ll have to find something else to play about with next. There’s short bits of footage on the Anglia Scooters Facebook page of various results from tweaks to the 221cc 44hp Vespa, and Dyno readouts from various sessions, including the 221cc Malossi Vespa.

In recent years, Anglia Scooters has provided a scooter fault diagnostic and breakdown service at the annual regional rally at Great Yarmouth, hosted by Sidewinders SC.

We did provide that service at Sidewinders Rally in 2017. Nigel, who owns and rides the ever-evolving Grimstead Imperial replica GT Lambretta, helps me out at the shop at times.

Nigel came along and helped at the on-site breakdown bay over the weekend of the Sidewinders Rally. Running a small local business, it’s a good idea to get out and about, and meet up with customers and potential customers.

Attending the rally as Anglia Scooters and providing a service on site allowed me to do that, at least to a degree. Sadly, closing up the shop for three days puts our customers’s work back by five days or more, factoring in the time it takes to load up a fully kitted workshop, and unloading again after the weekend.

I was more than happy to provide that service, as well as sponsor a trophy for the rally.
However, last year shop business reached the highest level it had ever experienced. The previous year was busy, but last year it was off the scale.

As much as I’m all for supporting local events such as the Sidewinders Rally, I can’t see Anglia Scooters providing a similar service any time or anywhere soon, because my customers have to come first.

You’ve mentioned the fact that 2018 was Anglia Scooters’s busiest and best year to date. What were your highlights?

Without question, 2018 was the busiest year for us yet. We experienced the highest turnover of jobs ever, and bought a Dyno which has been a revelation, it’s become an integral part of Anglia Scooters. It’s also added significantly to the range of services that we are able to offer to our customers.

We hit 44hp on a 221cc Vespa, as well as had two Anglia Scooters Vespas featured in Scootering magazine. Those are my highlights from last year, as well as reaching full capacity work-wise.

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Scooter Trader