SCOOTER AND THREE WHEELER

Scooter and three wheeler ran from 1955 to 1967 and had two distinct phases. Up to 1959 it was edited by Cyril Ayton, later editor of Scooter News and later still Scooter News Mechanics.

From the outset the magazine was designed to appeal to the non-enthusiast commuter, and women in particular. Consequently there were no “Lambretta gearbox strip in easy stages” kind of articles. Instead there were articles on hairstyles and fashion and celebrity scooter owners - e.g. Stirling Moss - were featured.

At this point in time the magazine seems to have been solely directed at the London commuter market -nearly all the advertising in the early issues is from London scooter dealers. The “threewheeler” element was always a small minority of both readership and content. Scooter and Three Wheeler (or “STW” as it was often referred to ) was then sold to Croydon based Link House Publications - a company still in existence. The editorship was taken over by Dennis Dalton who kept it to the end.The commuter market soon started to fade forcing the revamped magazine to concentrate on other aspects of scootering. Club scootering was always particularly well covered. However, circulation gradually slipped throughout the sixties and the final issue was in October 1967. In the last couple of years a certain number of technical articles had started to appear in an unsuccessful attempt to widen readership.

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

By the sixties there was a regular women’s’ feature written by “Jackie Smart” - one assumes a nom de plume. As it ran for a number of years, there may have been more than one Jackie. She was more independent than her fifties forerunners- but only up to a point. A certain amount of initiative was permitted, particularly when it came to getting seats recovered. Otherwise, nothing beyond a spark plug change was attempted. Many of Jackie’s early columns were embellished with stories of minor mishaps on her scooter - no macho wheelies, just a plethora of ladylike bumps and scrapes. The inevitable happened and an uncharitable male reader took the trouble to count up the misdemeanours and declare Jackie to be a menace on the roads. It took some nifty editorial back-pedalling to stave off the resulting “sack Jackie Smart” campaign.

CARTOONS

The cartoons were by “Orme” and were better drawn than the ones in Scooter World. They were also funnier - though only slightly. The caption to the one shown is “First time my wife’s been able to make a pullover to fit-at least for winter riding” Women’s’ liberation had yet to extend to cartoons.

GOOD IDEAS

If you consider that using the screw tops off old toothpaste tubes to protect exposed threads is the sort of thing you would wish to do, then you would have liked this feature.

MECHANICS CLINIC

The limited technical capabilities of the readership were well understood, so the mechanic in question told monthly tales of the wrong grease being used to lubricate speedo drives and the suchlike

GRAPHICS

There was a definite style to the later STWs, typified by the illustration shown here and also the Jackie Smart one. This kind of graphic style was very representative of the “swinging sixties” and gave this magazine a slight artistic edge over its rivals.

VIEWPOINT

Originally known simply as “readers letters” the content in the early day s tended to reflect middle class concerns as did that of Scooter World. The readership of STW being less technical, there tended to be a lot of letters bemoaning the lack of British scooters and the suchlike. As the sixties progressed, the youthful reader and his “My LI will do 75 in third” kind of letter fortunately plagued magazines other than this one. This left the letters page to the worthy (if slightly dull) exhalations of the average scooter club member. For example, in the December 1966 issue we learn from Merseyside Vespa Cub that two of its lady members had been having great success. One had won the scooter class in the Wallasey Road Safety Rally, and the other had done the same in the Huyton and Roby Road Safety Rally. To use the vernacular of the time - dullsville!

STW AND SCOOTER WORLD

Scooter World hated STW! The problem started when Cyril Ayton named the company that published STW “Scooter World ltd”. Scooter World (the magazine) then sued Scooter World (the company) and promptly lost. After Link House had bought STW they were the subject of a ferocious editorial attack in Scooter World who accused them of inflating the circulation figures of STW in order to lure advertisers away from themselves. It appears solicitors letters were exchanged and the bad blood continued to flow just beneath the surface