Lambretta Li125 Series 4 / Lambretta 125 Normale.

It was long thought that the series 4 was a special or government order but we can now dismiss that theory. With no information ever published publicly, no sales brochures, user manuals and such produced, has just lead to some speculation in recent years. Pete Davies of the British Lambretta Archive and leading authority on these machines has spent years trying to answer questions regarding the mysterious series 4. He's written various articles and a chapter dedicated to them in his book The Lambretta Bible.

However as a keen Anorak of all things Lambretta and member of the BLA, I have acquired various documents over my years of collecting, after a conversation with Pete over a coffee or two at my house earlier in the year, he set me a challenge, which he quite often does, to find out what I can about these mysterious machines in particular.

Touche Sir! I see you and I raise you my friend. I sent him a text with a few references to some files I had in my Archive. He was soon on to writing what may possibly be the final article on them, which has since been published in Classic Scooterist Scene magazine.

In further addition to that article I'd like to provide some technical information that maybe of interest to some people in order to paint a clear picture.

We can start by taking a look at the production of the Li range for a view of production on the Innocenti factory floor, to me this is most important in order to gauge the intention for Innocenti and its market placement.

So Innocenti ceased it's production of the Li125 Series 3 in June 1966, however it's larger CC sister model, the Li150 remained in production through to January 1967, then subsequently after a 3 month gap in production the final 274 Li150's were built for the American Market. We know this from the production records "Chiusura a consuntivo produzione anno 1969" from the factory.

The earliest records that we have are the Homologation Certificates from the Italian Ministry of Transport. The certificate of conformity which is updating IGM 0902 OM, that of the Li 125 Series 3 and is dated 01/08/1968 to introduce the Series 4 to the market, and from this we can see Innocenti intended, if only for a short period, to continue production and offer a basic Li125 model.

The Li125 series 3 had several amendments to its homologation papers too and also mention the series 4 conforming to these updates.

Taking a look back on the production records 1472 Li125 Normale were produced in September, October and November of 1967, however the Frame prefix changed to Li4 and Frame and Engine Numbers starting from 148000, as noted on the homologation certificate.

These 1472 machines, featured various inconsistencies which for years, Pete has noted the different characteristics of the components on surviving examples, from studying various factory amendments issued by Innocenti I have compiled the following part numbers for all of the updates issued to the Li 125 Normale. Production of machines on the factory floor, saw all old stock of parts used until depletion and subsequently replaced by the following updated components. These parts were intended replacement parts for the Li125 series 3 too.

Pre Mod - Post Mod

So from this, we can see that the anomaly of parts found on surviving examples consisted of pre and post modification parts. As such these post modification parts were subsequently made available to the Innocenti spares stockists globally. Series 3 Parts catalogues should have been updated with the above part numbers. Series 4 machines were issued with a Li125 series 3 user Manual when purchased.

So are they rare and do they command more money? With respect of rarity yes and no, they are after all, just an update of the Li series 3, but desirable nonetheless to the anoraks out there. I don't think that constitutes a considerable higher increase in value, however, that said and with respect of agreed value for insurance purposes, they do come up for sale occasionally but it's not something that you can replace easily, so that should be taken in to consideration.

Myself and Pete Bla Davies continue to keep the series 4 Register of surviving examples growing by adding more and more Frame and Engine numbers to the list as they come to light and noting any pre and post modification parts fitted. Survivors have been found all over Italy, and many now reside in the UK.

John Walklate (Johnny Lambrettista)