I never knew that people raced scooters at the Isle of Man. Until last week when I discovered this footage and became an immediately happier person. I like scooters. I know that this makes me less of a man in the eyes of hard-core motorcycle dudes but I don’t care. There’s a lot to be said for a 50cc smoke-spewing two-stroke, with tires the size of doughnuts and a headlight that gets brighter or dimmer based on how much throttle you pull.
The video was shot on an 8mm Super-8 camera and is 41 years old so it’s a little shaky in parts and a little dark in others, stick with it though, it’s an fantastic glimpse back to a simpler, cooler time.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
