Best of both worlds
scooter collection
On New Year’s Eve 1948, in what was the large Lancastrian town of St Helens
(now in Merseyside), a child came into the world screaming for attention...
and nothing has changed much since then!
F
or as long as he can remember Freddy
Turner always had a keen sense of
style and for Christmas and Easter, his
mother would buy him a new outfit. He can
remember getting his first tailor-made suit at
the age of 13, which he wore with a pair of
winklepickers and a polo neck jumper.
Being so close to Liverpool it was only
natural that the Mersey Beat Fashion would
have a big influence, which Freddy says was a
more casual look with denim and leather.
In the mid-Sixties, while aged 16, Freddy
purchased his first scooter, a Triumph Tigresswith a maroon and cream two-tone paint
scheme. He paid the princely sum of £5 for
it, rode it a mile, whereupon it stopped never
to run for him again. He eventually sold it for
£2-10s-0d. This didn’t really bother Freddy too
much as his priority at the time, being a young
trend-setting Mod, was clothes and records.THE TIMES THEY
ARE A CHANGIN’
In 1967 Freddy purchased a Lambretta
SX150 from Dingsdales in St Helens; he
can remember his mate buying a LambrettaSX200 around the same time, but he was
knocked off by a vicar – god bless him!
As the decade came towards its latter years
times were changing, and the fashion trend
for the guy about town was leaning heavily
towards long hair and flared trousers with an
abundance of silk.
In 1969 the cult film Easy Rider, written by
and starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper,
was released and had a similar if lesser
noticed effect on the bike world as what was
to happen a decade later with the release of
‘our film’.48 WWW.CLASSICSCOOTERIST.COM
ORIGINALITY SHINES THROUGH