Vespa fans around the world struggle to comprehend how British scooterists race Vespa SS90 models. These rare factory-produced sports models now command extremely high prices as a genuine article and are often created as replicas.

 

In Britain though the sporty SS models were always used on the track, almost from the day they were new in the late 60s. Sporting scooterists bought them for road trials, gymkhanas and use on the IoM.

 

By the 1980s many of the SS90s sold in the UK had seen track action and both Norrie Kerr and Terry Frankland owned several highly-tuned SS Vespas for different classes. Famous names like Taffspeed, MSC, Kegra and Mikeck all tuned SS smallframes for racing, where they were exempted from the step-through rules dues to the factory-fitted dummy centre-tank. This added stiffness gave the smallframes a handling advantage, particularly on twisty tracks.

 

Mark Green was very much a prodigy of Norrie Kerr, racing for Team Vespa into the 1990s and becoming overall champion 4 times, however after taking part in the Piaggio Zip racing series where James Toseland and Leon Haslam started their racing careers, Mark stopped racing in 2000.

 

Just recently, as shown in the video above, Mark\’s Vespa has been dragged out of its home for many years (the back seat of one of his cars). It is still in its mid-90s Team Vespa livery complete with Amal carb, Taffspeed exhaust and tank-mounted rev-counter.

 

Power output of the Taffspeed-tuned engine was just shy of 20hp in the up to 150c class. Consider that both of these machines will be running tuned Vespa barrels and rotary induction, not cylinder kits. With no decent lightweight electronic ignitions available these machines ran battery-powered Lumention ignitions adapted from car use.

 

This chassis was  Norrie Kerr\’s \’LC2\’ watercooled smallframe in a previous incarnation and has taken 10 championships in various classes. After Mark retired in 2000, Norrie gave Mark the Vespa in recognition if his achievements.

 

The video below shows how well these machines went around a track like 3 Sisters in Wigan.