Book review- la Mobylette Universelle - National Autocycle and ...

In 1930 new government regulations created the BMA motorcycle category (Bicyclette à Moteur
Auxilière), similar to our own autocycle regs, which dictated a maximum speed of 30kph, weight of
30kgs and the fi tting of pedals capable of being used to propel the cycle. The bureaucrats somehow
forgot to specify an engine capacity limit, which resulted in many BMA’s, with a little tweaking,
going considerably faster than 30kph. Post-war a capacity limit of 50cc’s was set for cyclomoteurs
but then ‘they’ initially forgot to limit speed, so we had those glorious 50mph cyclosport bikes.
La Mobylette Universelle continues the story of the prototype AV3, hidden away behind the Poney
50 and other larger motorcycles on the Motobécane stand at the 1949 Paris Salon until discovered
by journalist Max Enders who, aided and abetted by Willem Kaptein in Holland, more or less forced
Motobécane to manufacture the Mobylette. On the technical side, an innovation appeared in 1953
in the form of telescopic front forks on the new AV31 “Luxe”. Until then bicycle front forks were
de rigeur but Eric Jaulmes was tipped off by an engineer at UTAC (the French equivalent to MIRA,
the Motor Industry Research Association), who was testing an American bicycle made by Huffman
from Dayton, Ohio, equipped with simple, solid telescopic front forks. The design was perfect
for Motobécane- simple, cheap to manufacture and robust, so the company bought patent rights
from Huffman and every front fork made for Mobylettes since 1953 are almost exact copies of the
Huffman bicycle fork. For good measure, the streamlined, mudguard-mounted headlamp of the
AV3- AV33 Mobylettes was also a straight crib of Huffman’s bicycle headlamp......
Other innovations soon followed- in 1952 the “Super Standard” AV32 was offered with with an
automatic clutch, enabling riders to start the engine with a simple push of the pedals and accelerate
away and stop without having to restart the engine every time; 1954 saw the introduction of
aluminium cylinders with hard-chrome bores, a technique pioneered by Norton in Britain using
Alfi n patents for racing engines, and in 1954 by the adoption of René Mangin’s wonderfully simple
but effective variable diameter engine pulley, allowing variable gearing according to engine speed
and road conditions, a system used to this day in any number of ‘twist & go’scooters. The fi rst
version envisaged by Motobécane had sprung ball detents which gave three defi nite “gears (see
below), adopted by Eric Jaulmes in case constantly-variable gearing frightened owners unused
to such a thing! This was soon replaced by the Mobymatic variator familiar to many millions of
Mobylette owners.
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Patrick Barrabès’ book is illustrated with a
wealth of previously unseen images: prototypes
which never reached production, brochures
dating back to the very fi rst Mobylettes,
technical drawings, rare photos of various
factories at work (the automatic wheelspoke
machine at Rouvroy is astonishing),
the multitude of different models built under
license all over the world- Holland, where it all
began, Britain with Raleigh, Spain with GAC,
Austria with Lohner, America with Riverside,
Motomarina and eventually MB America,
Dynamax in Canada, Beldesan in Turkey
and Caloi in Brazil. Mobylettes were also
manufactured in many African countries,
Indochina, India, the list is almost endless.....