Underground Journal

Yes, There Was a Mobylette Scooter

The Mobylette was a European icon—the noisy little moped-like scooter was a hit with the rural French teenagers almost from its 1949 inception and premiere, and became something of a legend with its prominence in the hit film Amelie. In fact, the brand’s name became as generic a term for mopeds as, for example, Band-Aid is for household first-aid bandages or Mixmaster is for home electric mixers, regardless of whether they are the famous Sunbeam brand machines.

But Motobecane quit producing the vehicle brand in late 2002, when extremely stringent new anti-pollution laws due to take effect in much of 2003 Europe brought about its demise: its tiny, two-stroke, 49.9 cc engine, as famous for its noise as for its reliability, was just too dirty to hold up under the new laws. None of this meant the absolute end of the brand. The moped’s production was shifted to Morocco and Tunisia; earlier, there appeared a series of Motobecane-made mopeds rebranded as Riversides, a brand of Montgomery Ward before that once-venerable retail chain sank in bankruptcy.

Mobylettes were popular mopeds in the United States until Motobecane underwent a financial restructuring in the 1980s, and there are believed to be hundreds if not thousands of them remaining in the U.S., many in need of restoration. A website (www.mabecanemobylette.com) devoted to just that kind of restoration, featuring instructions for repairing and maintaining the mopeds as well as how-tos for restoring them, includes imagery of six Mobylettes restored by the site owner.

Those instructions include greasing the clutch and pedal axles, installing cables, setting engine timing, fitting new brake shows, removing and restoring drive chain, repairing the shift from pedal to drive, replacing engine bushings and installing fuel tank condensers. It also has instructions for removing and refitting the engine, the spark plug and timing points, the wheels, the steering head and driven pulley, matching pistons and rings, and leaky fuel tanks.

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