“Hi, my name is Chris,

This is my rat rod 1960 Lambretta Li 150 Series 2 Scooter.

Among a junk pile I found along the side of a road I saw this scooter laying in the dirt, basically a pile of parts. I stopped to ask the owner about it and discovered that the Board of Health was writing him up for having it there. So he offers to throw it in my truck if I’ll drag it away.

I got it home, put all these parts on saw horses and embarked upon this scooter project. Rat rod’s are amazingly modified vehicles that intentionally use a patchwork of parts from different vehicles.

The engine, transmission and forks are from a bike I ‘parted out’ 15 years ago. I spent the next year and a half amassing parts from Argentina to Vietnam to Britain and the USA. The parts were original, used and beat-up. If the paint was more destroyed, it was more in line with my vision for this scooter.

The bike vibrates a lot and it’s not the most pleasant thing to sit on. And because it looks so bad it brings out different things in people.

My total investment is probably $4500. A friend rebuilt the engine but the ignition cost a lot. I bought this fancy one because I wanted it to always start.

Since it looks so bad, it has to run really good!”


Lambretta was a line of motor scooters originally manufactured in Milan, Italy by Ferdinando Innocenti in 1942. There are clubs across the world, both national and local, devoted to the Lambretta scooter. A rat rod is a style of remake that, in most cases, imitates (or exaggerates) the original. Most rat rods appear “unfinished”, whether they actually are or not, with just the bare essentials to be driven. (Source: Wikipedia)

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