I’m not into flying to countries on business. I’ll quite happily drive thousands of miles on my motorbike and call in at a few businesses just to say hello and put a name to a face. But once upon a time me and Ian my manager decided to get on a plane and go visiting some Germans trading in Scooters in Italy.
We ended up in the countryside, in an old Chicken factory with rows of Italian scooters lined up. There wasn’t much there that we were interested in – all the good ones had gone into Europe. There was some Scooters lined up that we just laughed at – today they are fetching unreal amounts of money – silly us!
In another big shed we found some 3 wheelers, not something we were interested in but we ended up buying a Lambretta Lambro – a little 3 wheeler pickup truck.
Now these are rare in the UK and they are rare in Italy – usually the cabs have been cut off as it get too hot in the fields in the summer – this was mint and original.
It lived in the shop for years, it was moved to our latest place and just kept junk in the back. Just one of those jobs that we were never going to get around to. We had it running for a laugh driving around the estate forward and reverse it all worked.
Back to driving to meet dealers. We had toured down to Lands End on the big bike, on the way back we called at one of our dealer customers just for a chat. Many years later I took a random phone call from this customer and said ‘when I was up at your place last you had a Lambro do you want to sell it’?
The deal was done and the customer drove the 300 miles in a Tranny van which then took a few of us to push the Lambro in the back of the van and he was off again on his 300 mile trip – Another vehicle out of the building!
Did I regret it? – well actually I did, not long after, I moved into the farm and it was needed in the fields. I still had to buy the little Honda 4×4 pickup to do the work!
