Living in London UK from 1963 until 1966, along with using the London Underground subway system aka the Tube * wherever and whenever I could, when the subway was not the most viable solution to my immediate travel needs, having elsewhere previously owned motorcycles, I figured that would be a better means of transport than a car given about eight million other people at the time ** were also trying to figure out how to get around London by car and even more challenging, then park it. Especially the latter! Motorcycles and their more benign cousins scooters, are of course so much easier to park almost anywhere there is a relatively small space.
When I was sixteen, I had a girlfriend who had a Lambretta scooter which I got to ride quite a lot along with my own AJS 350 cc motorcycle. In London, would a scooter be more practical even than a motorcycle I wondered? Scooters are typically lighter than motorcycles and tend to be better equipped for carrying things be they groceries, library books, a few beers, whatever. They also sometimes have luggage spaces that can be locked, another plus over most if not all motorcycles of the day.
Italian built Lambretta and Vespa were the most commonly seen scooter brands at the time both being reliable and easy to maintain especially since both used relatively simple two stroke internal combustion engines rather than the more complex albeit more powerful four stroke. Less commonly seen, the German manufactured Heinkel Tourist scooter was another option and it did have a four stroke engine. This yielding significantly more engine strength utility and power over Lambrettas and Vespas. Why not check out the Heinkel Tourist first I thought. I very soon found a used one in excellent condition for sale at a very fair price. I bought it before someone beat me to it.
Unlike its two Italian rivals, which as stated were two-stroke engine powered, the German built Heinkel Tourist originally used a 150 cc overhead-valve four-stroke engine developing 7.2 bhp. It was superseded by the 175cc models 102 and 103, whose engine was also used in Heinkel’s ‘cabin scooter,’ a three wheeled two seater ‘bubble car’ in one of which I once had a ride as a passenger in London’s extremely dense traffic. For sure not a vehicle in which to have a collision. Survivability in a head on collision especially must have been a long shot! The entire front of the vehicle was the one and only door. The door was equipped with an extremely large window. My Heinkel scooter incidentally was equipped with the 175 cc engine.
I very much enjoyed riding the Heinkel Tourist even taking it by ferry across the English channel and exploring parts of France, Belgium and Holland camping along the way. This with my girlfriend who had moved to London as indeed some considerable time previous had I, from Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire where we had both grown up. Once aboard ship and underway for the channel crossing, I recall having an interesting conversation with a fellow passenger who enquired as to our plans and seemed intrigued by the Heinkel. I remember him saying that he admired my sense of adventure which as it turned out, was ultimately some years later to trigger me to emigrate to Canada.
Superior in my opinion to most scooters, the Heinkel non the less inconveniently chose to break down after a couple of days on the European continent. The engine just quit for no obvious reason. My repair skills were limited to cleaning and/or replacing the spark plug! The problem I determined, was not the spark plug. We were stuck on a French camp ground. With my ‘O-level’ as in Ordinary, as opposed to ‘A-level’ as in Advanced, high school certificate and thus limited schoolboy spoken French capabilities, I went looking around the camp ground for help and found it quite quickly. Someone had a friend who owned a garage and could repair it seemed, just about anything. But how to get the scooter to the garage?
No problem said our new found friend whose English was a lot better than my French, he would tow us or rather me, to the garage which he said was not far away. Tow I thought, wouldn’t that be rather dangerous? A car towing a car is one thing. A car towing a motorcycle or a scooter is quite another kettle of fish of which I had zero experience. He assured me it would be fine and when driving the tow car, he would make sure to be extra slow and cautious. In any event we were in a Hobson’s choice situation so towing it was. I would ‘ride’ the scooter with the ignition switched off and the gears of course in neutral and my girlfriend would travel in his car along with a couple of his friends. With a marginal looking rope, we hooked up the Heinkel to our new found friend’s quite small car and set off, in my case certainly very gingerly.
Keeping the Heinkel upright under the circumstances proved to be, still to this very latter day, one of the most nerve-racking things I have ever done. *** I felt very trapped. Once underway, I could neither slow down, speed up nor stop. I was totally at the mercy and skill set of the car driver with whom I had no means of making contact! There was literally no way to safely communicate with him, my girlfriend or his buddies. About all I could do was watch for his brake lights and respond accordingly. If he accelerated I eased my brakes off. If he braked so did I. Keeping in very close formation proved to be a nightmare.
Somehow we made it to the garage with myself unscathed. The precise moment my tow car stopped, I stopped the scooter. Fortunately, about an hour later I was back at the campground under my own steam as it were with the Heinkel’s engine running fine again. I never did get to know what the problem was due to the language difficulties. The engine was running smoothly and continued to do so for many months afterwards. We successfully continued and completed our brief European sojourn further reliant at times on my very limited French. Mais oui! N’est ce pas?
One of the few issues I had with the Heinkel scooter involved the simultaneous use of both the front and the rear brake in heavy rain which as on a bicycle, is key but also at the same time dicey during a hopefully successful stopping or slowing movement. It was easy to over brake and cause on the Heinkel, at least on the one I had and for reasons unknown, the front wheel to retard too quickly potentially putting the rider on the ground very quickly.
One day in central London I was about to enter the always very busy Kensington high street at a traffic light and in pouring rain. The Heinkel had very recently developed an intermittent problem, the worst kind thereof, with the rear brake. It was pouring rain and I had no choice but to apply the front brake rather aggressively whilst approaching a stop sign rather too quickly. Although it didn’t jam the front wheel, for reasons unknown the front brake would sometimes retard the wheel intermittently no matter how gradually and smoothly it was applied. Just before I reached the intersection it ‘froze’ as in jammed itself firmly on causing me to lose control. I hung on as the bike, sliding beneath me fell completely over to the right almost in the middle of Kensington High Street. I eventually let go of the scooter and slid to a stop more or less unhurt. As I lifted the scooter up and remounted a man came running across the street waving a piece of paper shouting ‘I got his number’, ‘I got his number ‘. You got whose number I enquired? ‘The guy who knocked you off your scooter he replied’.
I assured my would be witness that I was fine and that the scooter’s braking quirk had caused me to drop the bike not a car driver’s carelessness. It occurred to me some time after the fact that had I been seriously injured and had become heaven forbid deceased, the would be witness might have caused an innocent driver to be wrongly found guilty of manslaughter. It doesn’t bare thinking about!
* The Tube is a slang name for the London Underground System.
** Now over nine million.
*** Second only to my falling a very long way down Blackcomb mountain whilst skiing at Whistler/Blackcomb, BC. Canada. See on this blog my story Saudan Couloir Catastrophe, June 29, 2022.