Eric Dregni - The Scooter Bible: The Ultimate History and Encyclopedia

In the beginning,

there was the Big Bang,

the molten masses cooled

and the galaxies formed,

life emerged from the seas,

humans developed...

THE
SCOOTER
BIBLE

THE ULTIMATE HISTORY AND ENCYCLOPEDIA

ERIC DREGNI

Introduction:
Mondo Scooter

The Pioneer Motorscooters
19021930

The Great American Scooter Craze
19351940

Military Motorscooters
19391945

The Golden Age of the Motorscooter
19461954

Mass Mobilization
19551960

The Mod Years
19601975

The DIY Years
19762000

A New Millennium
2001On

Scooter Encyclopedia
AZ

BY ROBERT H. AMMON, CUSHMAN PRESIDENT

The circumstances that led to building the prototype of the first Cushman motorscooter were interesting to say the least.

Aviator Colonel Roscoe Turner endorsed the Motor Glide scooter that E. Foster Salsbury had created in early 1936 in Los Angeles. Sometime in that same year, Roscoe Turner brought his air show to Lincoln, Nebraska, just down the road from the Cushman headquarters in Omaha. Turner toted along with him this little Evinrude-powered Salsbury, and a neighborhood kid saw this scooter and decided that it would be fun to have one of his own. He found some angle iron and wheelbarrow wheels, and built himself a motorscooter. And he used a Cushman Husky engine from a lawn mower to power it.

We at Cushman found out about this scooter by chance. One day my dad, Charles Ammonknown affectionately to Cushman employees as Uncle Charliewas at our spare parts depot in Lincoln and he looked out the window and saw the kid on his scooter buying parts. We were in the business of building and selling engines, and this scooter inspired my dad with the idea of making motorscooters to build and sell more engines. He charged me, with the help of our engineering department, to this task.

We built that first Cushman scooter when I was 19 years old. The frame was made from 1-1/4-inch angle iron but we soon learned that it wasnt strong enough. We then used 2-inch channel iron, which did the job. We learned early on that a rigid frame was essential, and that channel-iron design lasted a long time for Cushman. We used wheels from a wheelbarrow mounted with 4.00 8-inch tires, and had an engine in it and running in about 30 days.

Shriner Bill Ammon and Cushman Eagle

Bill Ammon, brother of Bob Ammon and son of Cushman leader Charles Ammon, was instrumental in sparking the longstanding Cushman-Shriner relationship. Here he is in 1962 on a Cushman Super Eagle as captain of the Sesostris Temple Motor Corps.
Courtesy of Shriner Sam Nelson Archives

I had read an article from the Engineering School at the University of Nebraska about the correct geometry for a bicycle or motorcycle. I developed the first scooters steering head angle so that the tail end of the steering head was at a point behind where the wheel touches the ground. When I got the scooter stable enough so I could drive it with no hands, I knew it was ready.

Our goal was to build just a good, sturdy, two-wheel scooter. It was a very crude-looking thing, of course. But from those couple of prototypes came the first Cushman Auto-Glide, which went into production in late 1936. With the success of our first scooter, we continued to build motorscooters until Cushman was the largest scooter maker in the United States.

I first talked with Michael Dregni and Eric Dregni about fifteen years ago when they were compiling information for their first book, Illustrated MotorScooter Buyers Guide, which included a detailed history of Cushman and the Cushman motorscooters. Their first book also told the story of the development of American scooters and their influence on the scooters that were produced throughout the rest of the world following World War II, particularly the famous Vespa and Lambretta.

Introduction: Mondo Scooter

In the beginning, there was the Big Bang, the molten masses cooled and the galaxies formed, life emerged from the seas, humans developed, and in 1902 the first motorscooter was created. By now, more than 25 million scooters have seen the light of day. It began with a Big Bang. It continues with a putt-putt.

Looking Good on a Lambretta TV175

High heels, white sunglasses, and blood-red lipstick were the perfect accessories when riding a Lambretta to get groceries at the neighborhood Food Fair.

Scooters are funny. They are mechanical marvels on two wheels. Streamlined spuds. Mutant oddballs of Jet Age styling gone berserk. Innovative inventions shoehorned like sardines into miniaturized monocoque bodies. Engineering and styling enigmas, the stranger the better. They are two-wheeled pogo sticks, Italian hairdryers, Pushmans, dustbins on wheels, motorized lemons. Their names can be swear words, or their names can be uttered in worship by the faithful. They are the weird and the wonderful. They are the cute, the quaint, and the curious.

Throughout the ages, motorscooters have meant different things to different folk. Scoots have been cheap transportation for people without enough pennies for a car. They have been rebellious hot rods for misunderstood Wild Ones. They have carried lovers and warriors, priests and poets.

Even today, when motorscooters inspire collectors to search of their mythology and memorabilia, its different strokes for different putt-puttniks. To some, its nostalgia for the classic Cushman Turtlebacks and Eagles and a remembrance of things past, those long-ago golden buzz-cut days of the American summer. To others, its the full-bore two-stroke roar of a Vespa or Lambretta in anger, crowned by enough headlamps to light the night.