http://www.paris.org/Ric/jun/12jun95/ (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
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What you can still see around are the ever-black Velosolex's. In your memory's storage area, you might be able to pull a picture of one, perhaps ridden by a long-scarfed student in a Novelle-Vague movie from the 50's or by a priest wearing a sort of a 'was-ist-das' as headgear, similar to the one who stills eats spaghetti for God in TV commercials.
When you see a real one you won't be surprised to know that production was halted in 1988. They looked like some unlikely prototype that nodoby would build and certainly nobody in their right mind would use, but still, five million were built over 42 years and a good many are still in use.
A Velosolex is a bicycle with a 49 cc motor. It really does need the bicycle pedals that are standard equipment. The Velosolex' strong point was not power.
A new Velosolex was cheap; cheap to buy and cheap to run. It was simple; 80 percent of it could be fixed with one wrench. Running on a mixture of gas and oil, its 1.25 litre tank could propel you for 100 kilometres - and further, if the downhills outnumbered the uphills. And if you just loved yours, that was maintence enough.
Like a lot of French vehicles, the Velosolex has 'traction avant,' by friction - no transmission - and later models had the luxury of a brake at the rear. If you were 'motoring' on a level surface, you could take your feet off the pedals and put them on the convenient foot-rest. This saved your socks from getting sprayed with oil. However this raised the already high center-of-gravity even higher.
France felt itself to be prosperous in the mid-80's and the Velosolex' production logically ceased. The Japanese had been waiting for this moment to market their new, shiny, multi-coloured, modern, powerful and fast scooters - and they did. Before any European manufacturer could react, the Japanese had the majority of the market. The new scooters look nice, but they cost a quarter as much as a new four-wheeled car with two doors, a roof, and with a heater.
So now the good news: Here Comes...Velosolex! However, the French company that is having them built in Hungary does not want to pay 300,000 francs for the name, owned by an Italian company, and now the Velosolex is called the 'S 3800,' which was the last model number.
Or maybe it refers to the new price: 3900 francs, without haggling. Since the new one is identical to the last one, the list of handy accessories is the same. There are motor-heated 'cuffs' for the handlebars for example. But no speedo. That would not be logical.
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Updated 04/95