Quirky bit of moped history

[JLEECB]

Bought this on auction today for $43. One of those weird import rebadge jobs from the 70’s, like the Italian built Harley badged bikes. Took me a while to research it as info is quite scarce. Wanna know if anyone else knows the story about these “manufactured in Minnesota” bikes.

https://imgur.com/gallery/s4mGN8J

[Stichill]

Decent condition for $43!

[peterbaron]

Nice find and excellent price for it. Congrats

[GoldOxide_imp]

Nice sneaky deal. Any clue if it runs?

[JLEECB]

Was sold as “mechanics special.” I’m assuming it’s non running. Haha

Nice sneaky deal. Any clue if it runs?

[peterbaron]

Common JLEECB, you can get it running within 1-3 evenings, single piston, carb and few electrics, good luck.

[Gone in 60]

You're going to have to track down that sweet fake gas tank!

[Houtman_imp]

A very neat little moped !

[JLEECB]

I bought it on an auction site intending to flip it, but I’m seriously considering restoring or having it restored.

That fake fiberglass gas tank might be hard to get a hold of, parts seem extremely scarce, but there is hope! I see a rough one in South Dakota missing a lot of pieces but has the tank on eBay.

Scorpion, aka Trail-a-sled, was an important snowmobile maker here in Minnesota from late 50’s to early 80’s before being absorbed by Artic Cat. In the late 70’s they wanted an off season offering, and with the oil crisis, mopeds were apparently soup dajour. Rather than design and develop a moped, they imported NVT mopeds from England and rebadged them as made in Minnesota. They even put stickers over the engines calling them Cayuna motors, cayuna being the name of where Scorpion was based.

NVT was it’s own quirk. Norton–Villiers-Triumph being the consolidated company formed by the British government of the remains of BSA, Norton, and Triumph in an attempt to save the British motorcycle industry. In addition to the triumph motorcycles they made, they had a line of mopeds built and assembled in England using Morini Franco Motori motors from Italy.

So there it is. I paid $43 for British built moped with an Italian motor and an assembled in Minnesota sticker that was only available for one year in very limited quantities as far as I can tell.

[Bheezy27403_imp]

Well played.