Notiziario

Membership to local, regional, and national Lambretta clubs was becoming increasingly popular since the inception of the Lambretta scooter in 1947, and the phenomenon of the Lambrettisti movement was born.

The club magazine *Notiziario* for the Lambretta Club d'Italia made its first appearance in April 1949. This, the most sought-after edition for any *Notiziario* collector, is seldom seen.

(Note: I have yet to see one for sale on the open market, yet I have witnessed two copies change custodianship here in the UK recently.)

Green hard-backed covers were available to have your complete annum bound. Again, bound examples are rare. Recollection from many years ago is of three binders from 1949 through 1952 for sale in Italy. Subsequently, none have materialized since then on the market, which explains the precedence of all early examples and the command of such high market values.

The magazines were bi-monthly during those formidable early years through 1955, which leads to the first possible missing edition in the quest to uncover the complete history of these magazines. That was edition No. 6.

Then, in 1956, there is the possibility of one, if not two, missing editions, and those are Nos. 5 and 6, as edition No. 4 covered through August.

1957 saw a bi-monthly publication change to quarterly, but in 1958, publication gets somewhat confusing with the year published by Jan-April, May-Sept, and Oct-Nov, while December was covered by the bi-monthly edition No. 1 of 1959. Then issues 2, 3, and 4 of 1959 were quarterly. However, issue 5 was in newspaper format as an "extraordinary edition" to cover the assembly of Lambretta agents from around the world, which comprised 420 Italian and 60 foreign agents spanning 17 nations. However, Nov-Dec is absent.

1960 and 1961 are covered by only three editions per annum, with the addition of another extraordinary edition newspaper supplement No. 3 to cover the 24 nations in attendance at the assembly of Lambretta agents, and it is dated December.

1962 leads to a mystery with only Jan-March being covered, and no knowledge of any other editions that year. However, in 1963, the magazine was known simply as *Lambretta Club*, and three editions covered that year. In 1964, the publication was covered by five editions, all in a slightly larger format.

Finally, in 1965, the anomaly of a single edition, the Summer Edition... was that it? While the editorial explains the focus of this edition to be on the 3rd Milan - Taranto amongst the vast material submitted, it is not known if there were any other editions covering the earlier or latter months.

1966 is currently another mystery, and with the best educated guess, it was likely of the same format as we find in 1967. *Lambretta Club Notiziario* was a monthly feature in the Italian magazine *Motociclismo*. In this case, I've only discovered those editions shown below and am currently missing editions 1, 3, and 8. How long this format of publication continued is yet to be determined and is an ongoing task for the future. Any information would be gratefully received. You may also notice another anomaly that I can't explain: there are two versions of No. 11.