Nik looks back at a survivor from our early days by catching up with one of his personal favourites, Treasure.
Words: Nik Images: Gary Chapman
I’m sure that I can’t be the only one who has favourite custom scooters from the early days of the magazine which were outside of the usual shiny show ponies that are often referenced? These were feature scooters that, for whatever reason, resonated with your own personal tastes. The lovely, if somewhat timeworn, Lambretta that you see here is most definitely one of mine, and I’m always slightly surprised that it doesn’t have the same fame as others.
Enjoy more Scootering Magazine reading every month.
Click here to subscribe & save.
Despite only ever seeing it in the flesh once, and in both easily available magazines of the day twice, Treasure is a scooter that was etched deeply into my heart. It’s just ‘right’ to my eyes. Sadly, I never saw it again.
Imagine my reaction when, stumbling bleary eyed from my tent at Kelso last year, I saw it parked up about 15 tents away from mine. I think I may have gone a little bit fanboy at this moment, and was sending photos to Stan saying ‘look what I’ve found, we need to redo this one’ within minutes. Yeah. I like this scooter.
Mixed emotions
The strange thing is that I’m probably more in love with this scooter than the owner seems to be. Having talked to Mike ‘The Bike’ Collum about it, I get the strange feeling that it’s just ‘a scooter that I built’ and he doesn’t really see it as anything special. I don’t mean that he doesn’t like it; that it’s survived for the thick end of 40 years without a respray proves otherwise. More that he’s perhaps become used to it being ‘as it is’ without appreciating what he has.
Oh yes. I forgot to mention that. The current owner is the one who built it all those years ago, and remarkably it’s never left his care. That’s a hell of a long time with a single owner by anyone’s count. Perhaps I’m understating his appreciation of the scooter here….
Mike wasn’t overimpressed with the scooter, originally an AF Rayspeed S Type, and had quite a few issues with it, almost to the point of giving up on it entirely. The launch of the original TS1 was a timely thing and, in a last-ditch attempt to put things right, more money was spent upgrading to the latest ‘must have’ bit of tuning kit. This was much more like it, and Mike’s love of this Lambretta was rekindled.
Time for a repaint
About this time, the scooter was damaged by a car driver who backed straight into it, trashing the mudguard. It was at this point that Mike decided that if he was going to need a new mudguard, and get the paint matched up, then he may as well go the whole hog and opt for a more distinctive paint scheme.
Taking his favourite band, the Scottish pioneering dream pop band The Cocteau Twins, for inspiration, he sat down with one of the leading custom scooter artists of the day, John Spurgeon of Aerographics. Armed with a portfolio of images and record sleeves, they narrowed it down to the ones that you still see to this day. The background paint took as much thought as the actual art, with its unique ‘creased paper’ look of varying shades of off-white, and bits of gold leaf were added to give the finishing touches.
The panels had been cut, as was the style of the day, to allow for the TS1 carb which poked out of the ‘wrong’ side of the scooter, then later cut further to allow the fitting of a bigger-bodied carb, and finally further back, along with the running board, to allow for exhaust movement.
That the paint around the cut was never repaired, with the now missing band member’s name restored elsewhere, is evidence that this is very much a working bike and the all-round condition emphasises this. There are chips and scratches, and the chrome is flaking. Previously polished parts are dulled with age and bits of trim are missing, occasionally replaced with whatever does the job.
I think this is a good thing. She’s not a middle-aged lady hiding behind cosmetics and bling in an attempt to mask her age, oh no. Better than that, Treasure’s showing her faults honestly. There’s no doubt that she’s had a good and well-travelled life and has picked up a few scars along the way.
The usual word used to describe this is ‘patina’, but for me it’s a lot more than that. The word I’d use is ‘Treasure’, and I’m more than happy to have dug this one up.
