France: Loud Mobylettes Biting the Dust?
 

It seems that owning a moped is a rite of passage for French male teen-agers and i was talking to my French son, now 26, about this recently and i was surprised to hear him say that mopeds were now less cool than before and that the loudest mopeds, called mobylettes, are really passing out of the scene. Newer scooters he said are less noisy and more comfortable.
Oh you will i guess have the usual plump old men and women still riding the old-fashioned now mobylettes, but like widows wearing black for the rest of their lives this will eventually pass as well.
So the day of really loud mobylettes disturbing the peace hopefully is over?

Now the Mobylette maker is not stopping making Mobylettes and the site here shows the modern less noisy more comfy mobylette (lower case because this word has become, son says, generic and folks often call the loud old mopeds mobylettes)
http://mobylette1.tripod.com/

Hi! Now all the teenagers want to have scooters. They are much more expensive than the mobylettes (your link shows big ones). When I was 18 all my friends had a Peugeot 103SP (very fashion)like this one http://images02.olx.fr/ui/1/76/19/8916719_1.jpg. Personnally I had a Honda Camino (Honda already, a bigger one came next)like this one http://images01.olx.be/ui/1/83/51/2498251_1.jpg They were not supposed to go faster than 45km/h but with some little changes... C:) Vroooooommm!

Because they can't learn to drive a car until they are 18 all 16 years old want one here, either a scooter (usually the girls) or an old Puch, Yamaha or best of all Kreidler http://tinyurl.com/nwhyg8. My sonds had the Kreidler Florette RS and GT, both older they they were!

Nowadays kids are also keen on brommobiels, which started out being for invalids and old fogeys who could no longer drive a car, but he youth have discovered them and like them.
http://tinyurl.com/lovk9o

They are still popular with old fogeys too.

Vespas are as big as ever.

Coco cherie - ironiquement mon fils utilisais les deux memes mobylettes que toi - Peugeot 103 RCX - the third generation of Peugeot SPs and aussi, incroyablement, Honda Camino!

The smaller they are, the noisier they are. The 49cc things are the worst.

What will change this is the laws about vehicles & pollution. 2 stroke (the noisiest little *******'s) will be replaced by the much quieter 4 strokes. This has already happened with lawn mowers and boat outboard motors.

Peter