Scooter

feature

madness
How American intervention, an underground Saigon Scooter Centre is located down an alleyway in HCM City’s
District 12, hidden behind the coffee shops and orchid stalls that
economy and Cold War politics created the world’s line the boulevard to Tan Son Nhat International Airport. With

last stockpile of classic Italian scooters.
By Tom DiChristopher.
the nationwide popularity of Honda—the word for motorbike in
Vietnam is xe Honda—you’d think the Scooter Centre would be a
mecca for Japanese motorbike enthusiasts. But step inside, and
you’re transported to a more far-off land: Italy.
Among his stock of 50s and 60s-era Vespas and Lambrettas,
owner Patrick Joynt has more than a few vintage motorbikes, from
a WWII-era Excelsior to a German Zundapp 50cc. But there’s a
reason his collection—perhaps the best in Southeast Asia—is domi-
nated by Italian classics. Vietnam is the last place on Earth you’ll
find a stockpile of classic Vespas and Lambrettas.
“Even the Italian classic scooter market dried up years ago,” says
Joynt. “I myself and friends were going over there on buying trips
in the mid 1980s, and the country has been pillaged since, leaving
very few classic scooters.”
Joynt has been in Vietnam for twelve years now, hunting down
and restoring scooters, exporting hundreds overseas and keeping
others for his personal collection. The history of Italian scooters in
Vietnam, however, stretches back to the 1950s, during the waning
days of French colonialism. That history continued into the 60s and
early 70s, when the South’s changing global alliances influenced
the boom and bust of the Vietnamese scooter market.
For more than 25 years, Vietnam’s classic scooters would
remain an undiscovered national treasure, hidden away like time
capsules carrying stories from the Cold War.

21
 Throughout the war,
businessmen imported what
were previously luxuries—
refrigerators, radios,
motorbikes—rather than
capital goods like factories
and machinery
Our Story Begins in Italy
They say that necessity is the mother of invention.
In the case of the Vespa and Lambretta, the same
was also true of design.
Today, both brands are widely regarded as icons
of a bygone era, but in 1946 they provided a practi-
cal means to an end, a way forward in the post-war
years when the country’s industry and infrastruc-
ture were devastated.
Enrico Piaggio, head of Italy’s leading aeronau-
tics company, faced a crisis on two fronts. Not only
was Italy’s aircraft industry subjected to restrictions
as part of peace agreements, but his two factories
in Tuscany had been plundered by retreating Ger-
man forces and were eventually reduced to rubble
during strategic Allied bombing.
After brokering the return of his machinery,
Piaggio assessed the economic realities and social
needs of post-war Italy. He decided that what his
countrymen needed was an affordable and practi-
cal form of light transportation. Inspired by Allied
motorcycles, he commissioned a design for a sleek,
modern motorbike for the masses.
Unhappy with the first prototype (the Paperino),
Piaggio turned to aeronautical designer General
Corradino D’Ascanio. The general disliked conven-
tional motorcycles and took the opportunity to
correct what he saw as their defining flaws. To keep
the driver clean, he incorporated a shield-like front
and replaced the greasy drive chain with a mesh
transmission. By positioning the engine beneath
22 22 asialife HCMC
rather than in front of the seat, he left legroom to
accommodate women. A supporting arm similar
to airplane landing gear made the small tyres easy
to change, and the handlebar-mounted gear lever
made shifting a snap.
Upon seeing the finished prototype, Piaggio is
said to have exclaimed, “Sembra una vespa!” (“It
looks like a wasp”). Italy shared his enthusiasm—
the Vespa was an immediate success. Within a few
years, demand led Piaggio to license production to
factories across Europe and in Brazil and India.
Another industrialist who saw his factory
razed during the war, Ferdinando Innocenti, faced
a longer road to success with his product—the
Lambretta—despite having gone into research and
development before the war had ended.
Innocenti was inspired by the U.S.-made Cush-
man motorbikes and began to consider using his
rolled tubing industry to produce a similar model.
But even after Piaggio’s success with the sleek,
aerodynamic Vespa, Innocenti insisted on a design
with an exposed rear-mounted engine, which he
found beautiful. Following months of buzz that
fizzled into skepticism as Inncoenti struggled to
get it right, public response to the first Lambretta
model was lukewarm, and many of the bikes were
shipped to Argentina.
The second Lambretta incarnation dialed it
in closer with better suspension and a handle
bar-mounted gear lever. The third model, the
1950 Lambretta 125 LC incorporated a luxurious,
streamlined body with sleek, elongated back panels.
Innocenti finally got it right with 1951’s D model.
With both Vespa and Lambretta in full produc-
tion, the stage was set for the scooter boom to
explode into a craze.
Meanwhile in Vietnam
After Vietnam renewed relations with America in
the early 90s, journalist Henry Kamm returned to
Vietnam to capture the country at a crossroads.
He’d been a correspondent during the war, and
found that a few things had picked up right where
they’d left off:
“Traffic is at least as chaotic as it was in the
earlier days, and Communist rigor has not
prevailed against the penchant of the Saigo-
nese to break the social contract for mutual
safety symbolized by traffic lights or one-way
street signs. The young have revived the grimly
unromantic pre-1975 Sunday-evening mat-
ing ritual, in which endless swarms of boys
drive their girlfriends on their two-wheelers,
at maximum speed and noise levels, from the
square around the Roman Catholic cathedral
down General Uprising Street to the riverfront
and back up the parallel one-way streets.”
Kamm’s remembrances of Vietnam’s streets, as
well as the archive of photos at Saigon Scooter
Centre depicting proud owners posing on their Ital-
ian bikes, are evidence that Saigon was very much a
part of the global scooter craze of the 50s and 60s.
Indeed, both Kamm’s words and Joynt’s images run
counter to the Saigon of the 60s that springs to
most foreigners’ minds.
Starting with the influx of American aid and
subsidised commodities in the early 50s, South
Vietnam’s economy and industrial production
began to grow steadily, creating an urban middle
class largely comprised of government and military
administrators. Unlike the French colonialists—who
kept Vietnam’s market closed, causing standard
of living to stagnate for most Vietnamese—the
Americans saw domestic development as a way to
achieve their aim, self-interested and misguided as
it was, of propping up a free market, anti-Commu-
nist outpost in Southeast Asia.
It was, however, the French who first brought
Italian scooters to Vietnam, importing them
through the French subsidiaries of Lambretta and
Vespa. Both companies had a presence in Saigon
at least by 1954, at which point they were in fierce
competition on the international market, with
operations in over 100 countries.
Joynt from Saigon Scooter Centre has traced the
original Lambretta dealership back to a store on Hai
Ba Trung Street near Dien Bien Phu (now a dress
shop), and says that many of the early 50s models
were likely leftovers from the French. However,
judging from the scooters that can be found in
Vietnam today, sales peaked in the early 60s and
were almost exclusive to the South.
“The further north you go,” says Joynt, “the
fewer bikes there are.” With the exception of
Danang, a major military outpost, there are almost
none past Hoi An and Nha Trang.
Still, there’s something curious about the sheer
number of scooters that arrived in South Vietnam.
Piaggio and Innocenti designed their scooters to be
affordable to the working class, but in Vietnam, the
standard of living was far lower than in Europe.
Mac Duy Linh was a pilot for the Air Force of
Vietnam (AFVN) during the war and now runs his
own motorbike shop. According to Linh, a Vespa or
Lambretta was beyond most southerners’ means.
“The only people who could afford them were
government workers,” says Linh. “Factory workers
would ride bicycles. The people who could save
enough money would buy mopeds.”
So the question remains: Where did all these
scooters come from?
Italian Scooters,
American Money
American veterans Gil Simpson and Thom Hutch-
ings both served tours of duty in Vietnam starting
in the early 60s. Simpson grew up fascinated with
Indochina, and as a military man, jumped at the
chance to travel to the region he fell in love with
in the pages of National Geographic. He spent ten
years here, and after a long stint in Hawaii, per-
manently relocated to HCM City. Hutchings, now a
writer, did two years in the service and for a brief
time after moving back, exported Piaggio scooters
under Indochine Classic Vespas.
When asked where he’s from, Hutchings tells
people that he was born in the States but grew up
in Saigon. By virtue of his history in Vietnam, the
same must be true of Simpson. Like any red-blood-
ed American boys, they took a keen interest in the
cars and motorcycles in their adopted home.
“Going down a main boulevard,” says Simpson,
“It was just like it was today.”
“All you saw were the Hondas and Lambrettas,”
adds Hutchings of motorbikes.
But American soldiers weren’t just looking.
Simpson remembers his military buddies zipping
around on Vespas. “GIs would own them and run
them around base,” recalls Simpson. “Guys would
leave and sell it to someone in the barracks.”
“The PX flooded the place” with consumer goods,
says Hutchings.
GIs had considerable purchase power during the
war years. The official exchange rate was one U.S.
dollar or MPC (military pay certificate) to 118 South
Vietnam piastres, but Simpson and Hutchings say
the rate was more than double that on the black
market if you had American greenbacks. Simpson
himself used black market loopholes to import a
1968 Toyota from Singapore for just US $1,000.
At a 1970 congressional hearing, then director
of USAID in Vietnam Donald G. McDonald put the
black market rate at 356 piastres to the dollar.
“There have always been two economies here,”
says Simpson. “There’s no question about that.”
The hidden economy was particularly vigorous
during the war, due largely to the Americans’
inability to oversee the military and governmental
asialife HCMC 23 23
 Even the Italian classic
scooter market dried up
years ago. The country
has been pillaged.
offices they were supporting and the economic
development programmes they had implemented,
both of which absorbed billions in U.S. money.
Take for example the pillar of the United States’
development efforts, the Commercial Import Pro-
gram (CIP). The plan was simple. The United States
pumped money into the Vietnamese Treasury and
Vietnamese businessmen bought the USD at half
the exchange rate from the government to import
commodities subsidised at varying rates. The gov-
ernment then used the businessmen’s piastres to
fund military and development spending.
In theory, the plan would stimulate development
and control inflation, but in reality, U.S. money
(total CIP aid was 750 million dollars in 1969) dis-
appeared in the black market, and throughout the
war, businessmen imported what were previously
luxuries—refrigerators, radios, motorbikes—rather
than capital goods like factories and machinery.
At the time, a Lambretta or Vespa cost about
15,000 piastres, roughly US $125. However, the av-
erage monthly wage of a civil servant was US $30,
and government salaries were capped at $120 per
month. But the black market and other loopholes
made it possible for many to afford a scooter.
According to Simpson, all of the Vietnam Air
Force staff had motorbikes. They were notorious
for their political connections and for filling largely
superficial jobs that put them in positions to siphon
off American money. One of the most common
abuses was to overestimate personnel. An AFVN
office might be drawing salaries for 127 men, says
Simpson, when it only employed 88.
24 24 asialife HCMC
Patrick Joynt
The question is how much money could have
been lost through these channels. The answer is a
lot; the AFVN grew to one of the largest air forces
in the world, with 63,000 personnel at its height in
1974. And that’s only one U.S.-supported organisa-
tion. At the peak of its financial commitment in
1973, the United States spent almost four billion
dollars that year in CIP subsidies, staffing and
military spending.
By the late 60s, it had become apparent that
rampant corruption in the South Vietnamese
government had crippled the efficacy of the CIP.
In a 1970 report based on a 3-month survey of
southerners published in the Christian Science
Monitor and cited in McDonald’s testimony before
congress, the surveyors concluded that “Too many
Vietnamese have become dependent on handouts
… Television, motorbikes, air-conditioning have
been showered upon Vietnam without concern for
the social and economic effects.”
South Vietnam had become a fool’s paradise. The
long-term economic stability and industrial devel-
opment that U.S. money was meant to stimulate
would never come to pass. Too few businessmen
had invested in the means of production; they
preferred instead to make a quick buck on imported
consumer goods. By all appearances, the South
had grown a middle class, but it was rooted in
superficial and unsustainable economics.
Thanks to U.S. dollars, South Vietnam was a
nation on two wheels. But its people were going
nowhere fast.
The Undiscovered
Country
Stephen Mueller, managing partner of Vietnam
Vespa Adventures, first travelled to Vietnam as a
backpacker in 1996. Like many foreigners, he was
immediately struck by the surfeit of vintage Vespas
tooling around the South. After permanently
relocating to HCM City in 1998, he set up a scooter
restoration business.
Once he started to learn a thing or two, he
found that these romanticised design classics had
endured considerable neglect while hidden behind
the eastern iron curtain.
When asked what the Vietnamese used to keep
the scooters running in lieu of spare parts, Mueller
replies, “Coke cans.”
“From 1975 until the early 1990s,” says Joynt,
“the country was closed. It’s a well known fact that
people who couldn't afford petrol were swapping
Harleys for bicycles, as the bicycle was more practi-
cal in daily life.”
Joynt's visit to the home of a former Vespa re-
pairman illustrates this point well. Hidden beneath
the floorboards was a treasure trove of Vespa
miscellanea: vintage catalogs, original spare parts
and a full set of Vespa service tools. “He was mad as
a hatter,” recalls Joynt, “but it was a one-off find.”
Mueller, as well, found stockpiles wherever he
looked. During his first years in the business, he
would send a scout into the countryside to sit at

cafes and get to know locals before asking the
question he’d been sent to ask: “Anyone have an
old scooter?” It didn’t take him long to learn that
the Vietnamese don’t throw away anything; not
only did his scout return with truckloads of classic
scooters, but in most cases, the owners still had the
original registration, the key document needed to
de-register and export the scooters.
In addition to its unmatched stock of scooters,
other factors made Vietnam the right place to set
up shop. The Vietnamese are renowned for their
mechanical skills. The broken-down motorbike
tourist doesn’t wait long for help; virtually all
Vietnamese are competent in basic repair. For
Mueller, local skill in everything from bodywork to
fabrication provided the second key to his business:
cheap manpower.
Mueller estimates that an average restoration
takes 300 hours. Paying an American at $20 per
hour would set his labour costs at $6,000 per bike.
Still, it’s not a cheap business. Part of what’s
made Joynt probably the most reputable dealer in
Vietnam is the quality of his restorations. The cost
of importing spare parts, which are heavily taxed,
has perhaps kept competitors from entering the
business. But that has changed in recent years.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it,” says Joynt of
restoring classic scooters. “They’re not a few hun-
dred dollars any more. They’re a few thousand.”
Still, despite new competitors and other compli-
cating factors, Joynt isn’t heading back to England
any time soon. “It’s been a long 12 years. I don’t
want to go back and start it up again!”
To find them, you have
to know the history of
Vietnam since 1954.
End of an Era
It doesn’t take long for expatriates to catch the
vintage bug. But many new arrivals to HCM City
may find that the golden age of the Italian scooter
has passed them by. At the beginning of this year,
Joynt said the market had begun to dry up over
the last 18 months. He estimated that by 2010
Vietnam’s stock of classic Vespas and Lambrettas
will be almost completely depleted.
Mueller agrees. He still sends scouts out into
the countryside, but the pickings are bare. “In one
week, the guy could bring back 20 bikes,” recalls
Mueller of his first years in the business. “Today you
send him out and he might find two.”
Back in January, Joynt estimated that about
300 scooters were being shipped out of HCM City
each month. North Americans and Europeans still
have a healthy appetite for Vespas and Lambrettas,
but many are also being exported to Japan, where
Joynt says buyers will pay top dollar for a classic
scooter. And these bikes are not cheap: a restored
200cc Lambretta sells for upwards of US $10,000.
With scooter buffs willing to pay that kind of
money, Vietnamese restoration shops have entered
the market. However, many of them are less than
reputable and have given Vespas and Lambrettas
from Asia a bad name.
“It’s not that we’re sending out bad bikes,” says
Mueller, “but a lot of guys have.” Joynt says it's not
uncommon for foreigners to buy Asian restorations
and sell them to unwitting bidders on eBay.
Thom Hutchings
While Saigon Scooter Centre generally puts a
minimum US $1,200 into a single restoration, local
chop shops spend about 1,500,000 VND ($86) on
body and engine work, selling their bikes primarily
to foreigners for roughly $3,000. The tragedy for
enthusiasts like Joynt is that once these bikes
have been “restored,” it’s difficult and prohibitively
expensive to undo the damage.
Not only are the bikes poorly restored, but
many of them are dangerous. In 2007, scoot.net,
a popular scooter forum, sent out an alert about
Asian restorations. It contained a laundry list of
shortcuts: welding separate frames together to
form a single body, using Bondo rather than steel,
painting over rust rather than properly treating im-
purities, disguising cracked and faulty wheel forks
with chrome and neglecting rusty brake drums.
Classic scooters have recently become popular
among locals, as well. Music videos, adverts and
movies are influencing Vietnamese consumers, who
saw Vespas and Lambrettas as peasant bikes just a
few years ago. Now, fewer and fewer Vietnamese
may be willing to part with their classics.
“It’s something about the design,” says Tien Le
Dinh, 30, of his 1965 Vespa Special. “It’s different. I
think the design is very romantic.”
But despite massive export numbers and the
presence of chop shops, Thom Hutchings insists
some of the classics will go undiscovered for years
to come. “To find them, you have to know the
history of Vietnam since 1954,” he says, pausing.
“But I wouldn’t want to say any more because then
everyone would know where they are.”
asialife HCMC 25 25
 intag
v saige on
Saigon Scooter Centre houses perhaps the best vintage scooter
collection in Southeast Asia. Owner Patrick Joynt invited us into his
showroom and told us the stories behind some of his prized possessions.

1939 Excelsior
During WWII, the Royal British Air Force parachuted these fold-up warhorses
into the field. After running out of petrol, soldiers ditched them on the side of
the road. Today the only remaining models belong to Saigon Scooter Centre,
the British Museum and a bidder from a military auction in Australia.
So how did this bike find its way to Vietnam? Joynt says it’s likely a leftover
from England’s brief stint in the country at the end of the war, when the Brits
helped remove occupying Japanese troops. Joynt bought the Excelsior from
the chief driver of Vietnam's presidential motorcade, though the priceless
bike wasn’t cheap—the guy sold it to him on the condition that he buy his
collection of 24 motorcycles.
Lambretta 1954 Model F
This is the oldest Lambretta Joynt has found in Vietnam, dating back to the
company’s turbulent adolescence. In 1951, Lambretta struck gold with its D and
LD models, the latter being the first to feature a rear motor enclosed beneath
its signature elongated panels. In 1953, Ferdinando Innocenti sought to expand
that success by producing a more economical motorbike.
The E model featured a pull-string motor and a simplified monobloc engine.
However, it was rife with mechanical defects, and production was cut the same
year. Innocenti made another attempt at economy with the 125cc F series,
but despite its technical improvements, consumers were skeptical after the E
series fiasco. Innocenti got back on track with a revamped line of D model bikes
outfitted with 150cc motors.

26 26 asialife HCMC
Lambretta 1961 Series 2 LD Malaguti 1965 Saigon 50cc
The Series 2 line of scooters was permanently retired in 1961, but at the end
of production, Lambretta had 1,000 125cc Series 2 frames left. Rather than
let them go to waste, the factory fitted them with engines and shipped them
out. But instead of numbering the bikes where they left off—at 200,000—the
factory stamped the engines starting at 300,000.
When Joynt saw the engine number on a newly purchased Series II, he figured
someone had re-numbered it. But after some research, he found out about
the factory quirk. Joynt figures Vietnam received about 50 of the last series 2
bikes. Why they were sent to Vietnam is a bit puzzling; the bikes have a 125cc
engine (the legal European limit), but 150cc bikes were more popular and only
marginally more expensive in Vietnam.
Lambretta 1966 200SX Lambretta 1971 Cometa
Lambretta’s project Special X was launched in October, 1966 with the aim of
turning out design-led scooters produced with attention to detail. While the
200cc version would eventually become Lambretta’s most collectable scooter, it
was deemed too expensive to produce at the time and discontinued in January,
1969. In addition to the limited run, the numerous design changes made to
the SX line over its short life contributed to its latter-day status as a coveted
automotive keepsake.
Joynt has had more than 20 200SXs, but says there are very few left in
Vietnam—perhpas half a dozen. He picked this one up in Dalat and believes
most of the 200SXs and Tv3 175s in Vietnam come from there. The engine
capacity is ideal for the mountainous terrain.
Like Vespa and Lambretta, the Malaguti bicycle company began producing
motorbikes after WWII. Unlike Vespa and Lambretta, the company was lucky
enough to escape the war with its factory intact. In the 60s, the company
focused on producing 50cc models, including a line of scooters.
When Joynt found this motorbike, it was a bit of a mystery to him. However,
when he inspected the motor, he found the Malaguti name stamped all over
it. His curiosity piqued, he contacted the offices in Italy, but a representative
insisted that the company had never shipped motorbikes to Vietnam. Having
seen the engine, Joynt pressed the matter, and eventually a Malaguti employee
confirmed that the company had in fact developed a scooter specifically for
sale in Vietnam: the Saigon 50cc.
By the end of the 60s Lambretta was in trouble. Cars had become more
affordable and scooters were quickly falling out of fashion. In a final effort to
revive its flagging business, the company released a line of ultra-modern bikes
designed by Italian car-styling firm Bertone. Bertone came up with a spage-age
design that combined an ultra-modern frame with an exposed engine. The
Luna had some success in circuit racing, but the 75cc lubematic engine model,
the Cometa, was a flop.
It's unlikely that the Cometa would have been imported en masse to Vietnam.
Joynt surmises that this bike, which still has its original paint job, might have
been a private import. He found it sitting in a bath tub in the back of a Honda
shop. The owner thought it was some sort of weird Japanese moped.
asialife HCMC 27 27