simonhill wrote: ....The sound of the Mobylette used to be one of the sounds of France....
in the early 1980s I spent a few weeks in SE France and in the towns in that area the fashion for the local yoof was to have a souped up 'Moby'. Obviously a piston ported two stroke is highly susceptible to tuning and there were the inevitable big bore kits, big carb kits, racing expansion chamber exhausts, you name it. Also any number of chrome plated shiny doohdads could be bought.
Another fashion was the way they were ridden by the youngsters thereabouts; it was common for the feet to be rested on the step-through itself, knees together. This (I presume) led to another fashion which was to have a different saddle, set higher than usual, and once you had done this, you couldn't reach the ground any more from the saddle. This obviously wasn't any great deterrent from making the saddle even higher, by jacking up the suspension at both ends.
This is a Peugeot, but it is in a similar vein, sans the extra-elevated saddle
These machines were unbelievably noisy and more than slightly ridiculous-looking. Didn't stop the local yoof (despite the fact that they had to scrunge themselves into a small ball, several feet off the ground, for aerodynamic reasons) from riding the wheels off the things though.
cheers
We have a guy in the village who occasionally has them for sale but upwards of 500€! I take a look on Leboncoin from time to time and they do turn up so may get another.
