From Mods to Oasis: a short history of the Italian scooter in British rock
From Mod London to the Britpop of Oasis, the Italian scooter has traversed British music culture — evolving in form, yet preserving its status as an iconic symbol. Vespa and Lambretta accompanied the first generation, while in the 1990s, an object born in Bologna, the Italjet Velocifero, entered that same cultural lexicon. To understand how, we have to go back a few decades.
Before Oasis, there were the Mods
London, early 1960s. The Mods built their identity around music, clothing, and a precise way of experiencing the city. They frequented clubs, listened to soul, rhythm & blues, and jazz, and took great care of their appearance. To get around, they primarily chose Vespas and Lambrettas.
The choice was not purely aesthetic. Mods invested heavily in their attire, often wearing Italian-inspired tailored suits, and the scooter suited this urban lifestyle perfectly. Unlike the Rockers’ motorcycles, the enclosed bodywork of the Vespa and Lambretta shielded the engine and mechanical parts, keeping grease, oil, and road grime at bay. As a result, one could cross London and arrive at the club with a spotless suit.
The scooter thus became part of the very same visual vocabulary that included clothes, music, and venues. Chrome, extra mirrors, and custom modifications highlighted its appearance, while the contrast with the Rockers further defined their dual identities: on one side, motorcycles, leather jackets, and café racers; on the other, Italian scooters, tailored suits, and club culture.
Small Faces and The Who: the scooter enters the music scene
Among the bands closest to that environment were the Small Faces, formed in early 1960s London and deeply rooted in the Mod scene. Their connection to soul and rhythm & blues reflected the exact musical tastes that energized the clubs frequented by Mods. In this setting, the scooter was not an add-on to the band’s image: it was an integral part of the urban culture from which that music was born.
It was out of this environment that The Who also emerged, bringing Mod culture into music and, a few years later, into Quadrophenia (1973) — an album built around the character of Jimmy, a young Mod grappling with belonging, personal conflict, and the need to find his place. The scooter is an integral part of his world: not a mere prop, but one of the core elements through which his identity is defined. In 1979, Franc Roddam brought Quadrophenia to the big screen. Vespas, Lambrettas, parkas, and the streets of London became iconic symbols even for those who had never experienced that culture firsthand. The scooter thus made the leap from the streets into popular culture.
Paul Weller and The Jam
The movement did not fade away with the 1960s. In the second half of the seventies, while punk was reshaping the British music scene, Paul Weller and The Jam revived many elements of Mod culture. Tailored suits, scooters, soul, and rhythm & blues came back into circulation, but within a different era. Moving beyond a nostalgic recreation of 1965, Weller took those references and injected them into the music and tensions of the late 1970s.
This is one of the key factors that makes Mod culture particularly enduring over time. Rather than a style confined to a specific era, it became a language that could be picked up and adapted by different generations.
The Britpop years
In the 1990s, while Britpop brought British music back to the center of the international stage, the Lambretta continued to feature in the iconography of its leading figures.
Damon Albarn, frontman of Blur, has shared that he owned a Lambretta as early as sixteen, when he spent his summers in Umbria. During the years of Blur’s success, he was photographed multiple times riding the Italian scooter. The Lambretta thus reappeared alongside a new generation of British musicians, decades after its association with the Mods.
It is precisely in this context that the Italjet Velocifero enters the scene. Liam and Noel Gallagher had not obtained their driving licenses, and the moped represented a practical way for them to get around town. The two brothers thus chose an Italjet Velocifero 50, manufactured in Bologna in the 1990s. In other shots from the era, the Gallaghers also appear riding Lambrettas.
By then, the Lambretta belonged to the visual memory of Mod culture; the Velocifero borrowed some of the classic scooter’s codes and brought them into a new language, with its own unique shapes and details. The Italian scooter changed again: this time bearing the name of Bologna.
For Oasis, therefore, the Velocifero was first and foremost a practical vehicle, but it ultimately made its way into the band’s public image.
The bond between Oasis and Italy, however, is not limited to scooters. Over the years, C.P. Company and Stone Island, the two brands founded by Bologna native Massimo Osti, became part of the Gallaghers’ signature look and the British scene that surrounded them. The journey thus leads back to Bologna, where Massimo Osti built a language capable of bridging fashion, music, functionality, and British culture. We shared the story of his relationship with motors, the Mille Miglia, and the city of Bologna in this article.
The story of Italjet runs through San Lazzaro
The story of Italjet took shape in Bologna in 1960, when Leopoldo Tartarini — a former official Ducati rider who, alongside Giorgio Monetti in 1957–58, completed a 60,000-kilometer round-the-world trip on two Ducati 175s across five continents — founded the company. Over the following decades, the Bologna-based manufacturer spanned motorcycles, scooters, and wildly diverse projects. The Velocifero belongs to this phase of experimentation and perfectly exemplifies how Italjet reinterpreted the scooter in the 1990s.
Its connection to Oasis adds a unique chapter to this story: a model born in Bologna ended up embedded in the iconography of one of the most prominent British bands of that era, who remain at the center of the music scene to this day.
Today, that story is also preserved in the Pasquale Mesto Collection in San Lazzaro di Savena. The collection originated from the display of historic Italjet models that Pasquale Mesto had curated in the 1990s at the company’s original headquarters. When the factory closed, Mesto managed to save those materials and continued to expand the collection over the years. Today, it houses dozens of models spanning fifty years of Italjet history, alongside technical documentation, catalogs, and archival material.
After tracking the scooter through British culture, it is here that the story returns to its physical dimension: models, details, technical solutions, and artifacts that allow visitors a close-up look at the Velocifero itself. We had the opportunity to visit the collection during the first Bologna episode of Around Motor Valley, stepping inside one of the private archives that preserve a piece of the region’s automotive heritage.
A culture that endures
The story of the Italian scooter in the UK does not end with Britpop. Clubs, rallies, and collectors continue to keep alive a culture built around Vespa and Lambretta — one that has proven capable, over time, of being passed down from one generation to the next.
The scooter has shifted roles multiple times: a means of transport for Mods, a symbol of identity, an element of musical iconography, and ultimately a design object reinterpreted for a new era.
From London to Bologna, then, the journey is not a one-way street of influence. It is an exchange. Great Britain turned the Italian scooter into a cultural symbol; Bologna, a few decades later, helped reinvent it.
Partners involved:
Area involved:
