El Siambrettista

Many times, history has sinuous paths that makes that there’s something more to say. This is the case of the “Siambretta” 150 LI.

Lambretta LI 150 Series 2

The Lambretta 150 LI (Scooter LInea) is a kind of “small version” of the 175 TV (Turismo Veloce) in each one of the 3 Series of the Lambretta’s golden age (Series 1, Series 2 and Series 3). Some differences with its big sister are its shoter crack, its close gearbox’s relation and it hasn’t contact key (you have to turn off the scooter pressing a button located were the contact key is placed on the TV 175). Trust me, a very interesting scooter for riding in the city.

Lambretta 150 LI Series 2 engine

In Argentina, the Siambretta 175 TV is the national version of the Lambretta 175 TV Series 2. It was the “powerful one” in the Siambretta line targeted to a more demanding customer who wanted more speed, characteristic that couldn’t be fulfilled (neither in out country nor its born country) by the D/LD Lambretta line, which was discontinued by Innocenti when the Siambretta 175 TV sales started in Argentina.

In this context -very probably- Siam would have want to see the impact of a small versión of the famous TV 175 and started offering the Siambretta 150 LI “Totally imported”, which was the national version of the Lambretta 150 LI Series 2, as we can see in the advertisings bellow.

Siambretta Line Advertising	Guidi SA Concessionary Advertising (1962)

Thanks to the collaboration of our friends from BLA (“British Lambretta Archive”, the Britain’s Lambretta Historic Archive) now we can asseverate -without any kind of doubts- that amount of Lambretta 150 LI Series 2 produced for selling in Argentina climbs up to 9000 UNITS in 5 consignments, as it is shown in this original Innocenti’s production record.

Innocenti’s production record

Even more, you can see all this units were produced in 5 production runs between May and July and later between October and November 1961. People form BLA assure that Argentina is not mentioned in any other subsequent production record. All this scooters were partly built and shipped for the final assembly to be done in Argentina.

The fact that all this units were manufactured in 1961 let us conclude that they started selling in Argentina -as minimum- after the second half of 1961. An evidence of that in this 1962 advertising in Parabrisas Magazine.

Advertising in Parabrisas Mag

It’s worth to mention not all of this 9000 unit were sell by Siam. This scooters that entered the country could be sold, also, by independent authorized concessionaires under the Lambretta brand, as you can see in the Guidi SA Concessionary advertising above. Sadly, there are not Siam production record, so we can’t confirm what percentage of that scooters were sold by Siam. But something we can ensure -based on sayings of ex Siam workers- is the Siambrettas LI 150 sold by Siam had the badges changed by the Siambretta ones.

But that’s not all! If you are one of the lucky one that have one of this scooter model, in our Downloads section you can find the Original Instructions Manual IN SPANISH, translated directly by Innocenti in Italy. If you bought the scooter at that time, it’d come with this manual

Lambretta LI 150 Serie 2 Manual in Spanish