Novegro Exhibition Park: celebrating 70 years of the Lambretta

La 69 edition of the now famous Milanese fair dedicated to retro and components, has decided to pay homage to the 70 years of the Lambretta setting up the exhibition space in honor of the famous scooter. In fact, it will be a thematic exhibition of these vehicles, the attraction that will lead visitors through a parade of models closely linked to that chapter of the post-war Italian industrial revolution written by mass motorization on two wheels.

And in Novegro a challenge with a nostalgic flavor returns: Lambretta versus Vespa, as in the post-war period when the two rival scooters divided the neo-motorised population, creating an almost philosophical contrast. The Vespa, designed in 1946, therefore 71 years old, by Corradino D'Ascanio, has continued to live, evolving over the years, to become a global icon, available in dozens of models. There Lambretta instead, always the most loved by the Milanese, continued to struggle to stay afloat until in 1971 she was forced to give up and move to India. Today in the place of the original factory all that remains is rusty wreckage, shattered windows, near the Lambro river, Lambrate district, from which and for which the famous Ferdinando Innocenti named the vehicle Lambretta.

The Vespa was cooler, very fashionable, central-south stuff, sun and trip to the castles, here between the nebiun, the magun and the panetùn, that sort of Lego of tubes and chrome plating was better (Innocenti was an entrepreneur in the tube sector, the scaffolding for the restoration of the Sistine Chapel was the result of his factory). Its central engine is much more balanced than that "lateral coupling with unlikely road holding exhibited by the enemy Piaggio" as the most avid Lambretta fans said. The Lambrettist was, therefore, the average worker who, not yet being able to afford a Fiat or similar, focused on the two-seater in the open air, with an attached roof rack. In 1947 the same worker, a simple worker, brought home twenty thousand lire a month. The first Lambretta cost one hundred and fifty-six thousand, the boom that produced one million units a year brought the figure down to one hundred and twelve thousand seven years later. Along the Navigli, at Ortica, the site of Milan, but also at Santa Rita or at the Ferriere, site of Turin, you could count more Lambrettas than Vespas, followed by the Cinquecento, Seventeenth century, some Appia of the elegant Lancia, three-wheelers, torpedoes and bicycles.

Nothing better than the Novegro Exhibition-Exchange for remember this glorious history. Exhibition Park In fact, Novegro has stood out over the years as being recognized meeting place and commercial exchange for collectors of two and four wheels. The Exhibition-Exchange with its dynamism and the warmth of its immediacy brings the public not only to the admiration of specimens preserved in every detail but also to the possibility of intervening in the restoration and recovery of motorcycles, bicycles, cars and work vehicles that they constitute important evidence of our industrial history.

The appointment is therefore set for the weekend of 17,18 and 19 February 2017 at the Novegro Exhibition Park, on the outskirts of Milan, for a tribute to Italian motorcycle production which contributed so much to mass motorisation.