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I picked up these today, along with a pressure washer and a stihl trimmer
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That's a Fuji fold-up scooter. It was manufactured in the late 50's/early 60's, almost exclusively for the export market. It was sold under a variety of names, the most common being "Go-Devil" and originally came with big bag to put it in. It was aggressively pitched to aircraft pilots to stove it onboard but like most fold-up scooters it was really just a novelty item. It ran on 20:1 premix, meaning it could double as a smoke generator in case of war. ;)
 
I picked up these today, along with a pressure washer and a stihl trimmer
866620e35a72d7f2fd43b9c6375064d7.jpg

What you have here is a heavily modified mid '60s Centaur Folding Scooter.
Originally had a Clinton reed valve two-stoke with a belt torque converter. Had an alternator under the flywheel to run a headlight and brake light. It will fold up inside itself and was mainly sold to people with small airplanes or sailboats to use to run around town at their destination.
Here is mine, completely restored:
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Folded up it looks like this:
0615152030.jpg There are fold out foot-pegs for a passenger. It will do about 40 MPH flat out but gets kinda squirrely to steer, and the brakes were cable squeeze mechanical shoes and drum on the rear wheel only so stopping can get interesting.
 
The Centaur is a slightly later creature than the Fuji, production starting in 1960, and it was based on the 1953 French Val-Mobil, the first "suitcase scooter", which in turn was based on the British Welbike, of which French airborne troops had received large numbers after WWII: in fact the original Val-Mobil used a Welbike Villiers engine and as many components recovered from these surplus vehicles as possible.
Most Val-Mobil's were made under license in Japan by the Hirano Motor Co, and renamed Valmobile, and good luck if you have one of those: while the French-made scooters used Villiers engines and other British components that can be sourced relatively easily, Hirano is one of those companies lost in the mist of time. Sometimes you find some poor soul who has just found one of their Popet scooters in a barn or shed somewhere and thinks he owns a treasure of greatest rarity because "only 25,000 were made and very few survive these days". That may as well be the case, but a deadly combination of low grade untreated mild steel construction and lack of spares makes any restoration a truly expensive affair, often more expensive than the restored scooter is worth.

Most of these fold-up scooters could not be sold as on-road vehicles due to the lack of front brakes and other "ancillaries" so they were aggressively pitched as aircraft or caravan accessories, especially on the all-important US market. As most of them had peppy engines that could easily hit 40mph and they handled like a drunk elephant with a drunk handler, that meant a lot of trips to the ER and a few to the morgue as well. I think the famous, and much sought after, Honda Motocompo was the last of this breed.
 

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