That’s probably one of the coolest mugshots I’ve seen. Yes, despite the fact that it has a scooter in it. What matters is that exposed motor; anyone who knows their two-strokes should be allowed time to recover from this sight. For the record, the man is Senthil Arcot Govindraj of Skindeep Custom and that’s his Yambretta, a true twowheeled Frankenstein assembled by shoehorning a Yamaha Banshee 350 LC motor into an elderly Lambretta, the same unit found in an RD 350 LC, albeit making 34 bhp. The realworld result, I assure you, is more hysterical than imagination. And it’s so absurd, I wonder why no one’s done it before.
These Yambretta hybrids are quite a thing in Europe where there is no lack of LC motors. In India, some would almost think it’s a waste of a good motor, but there’s no wasting a good idea. Govindraj inherited the project from a man who met with an untimely demise, and then proceeded to turn the deceased’s dream into reality. And I bet he’d be proud of it, the raging improbability of an idea brought to life, screaming and smoking through twin expansion chambers fed by twice the original number of cylinders and cubes, and roughly four times the power of the old scooter. And as it goes with such things, it was far from easy.
This story is from the December 2020 edition of Motoring World.
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This story is from the December 2020 edition of Motoring World.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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