Caption:

1965 – THE ALTERNATIVE VIEW
Scooters and Swinging Britain as

seen through the eyes of Motor Cycle magazine

Alternative to what exactly? Well, you may be under the impression that 1965 was a seminal year of pep pill fuelled power pop featuring defining moments in music, fashion and film. But to those over thirty it mattered not a jot that Bob Dylan had gone electric. In this time of far less media saturation than today, it was much easier to create your own reality by restricting your reading matter to publications that confirmed your view of the world and ignoring everything else.
Motor Cycle was one such publication that gave a reassuring impression that nothing had really changed in the last ten years or so. Scooterists were still considered to be a bit daft and it was reported with some glee that Lambrettas running-in instructions included the immortal instruction: “In winter, let the engine idle for some minutes in order to warm up before starting”!
The Isle of Man Scooter Week took place as usual with a couple from Sweden winning the Loving Cup on their SS180. Incidentally, the attendance of 411 scooters was reported as being a record for this event, which rather suggests that some earlier events must have been rather small affairs. As always, any British scooter launch was eagerly reported upon, so the new Triumph T10 was given a fair amount of space and such a machine was won by Heather Desert in the ‘National Personality Girl’ contest. Unfortunately, the T10 was to be the last serious British attempt at a mass produced scooter.
‘Publicity runs’ were still in evidence and a couple of Britons (Bob Forrest Webb and Ian Speller), had carried out a Croydon backed non-stop journey from London to Milan on a GT200. On reaching Milan they posed dressed up as city gents. Other than the scooter itself, the whole episode has more of a feel of 1958 about it rather than 1965.
More general news included that of Douglas ceasing Vespa production at Kingswood, an ‘experiment