Scooter historian and aficionado Stuart Owen delves into the decade that fashion forgot to breathe new life into some of the best and worst two-wheeled steeds ever photographed by pocket cameras.
In his latest publication Scootering in the 1970s he explains how, from its halcyon days as part of the 1960s Mod movement, the scooter descended into darkness during the 1970s.
The Mods were growing up and buying cars, dealers were moving on to Japanese motorcycles and even the manufacturers were falling by the wayside – with the closure of Innocenti in 1971 bringing Lambretta production to a halt and the tooling being sold to India.
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Yet a spark of life remained. Scooter racing continued and the nation’s garages remained littered with the scooters of years past – just waiting for a chance to live again. It was the calm before the storm that was the 1980s scooter boom and the seeds of that exponential growth were already being planted.
In the second part of his trilogy on scootering from the 1960s to the 1980s Stu focuses on the 1970s – those heady days of disco sounds, northern soul, Oxford bags and cheap petrol – taking a trip down memory lane as dozens of evocative images of scooters and their riders burst from the pages of this 80-page bookazine.
Half a century on, Stu’s latest time-travelling tome fizzes with fantastic and fascinating photos of happier times; when phones were not mobile but teenagers were, thanks to their two-stroke transport.
Scootering in the 1970s by Stuart Owen retails at £7.99 and is available to order now from www.mortonsbooks.co.uk
