A rare image of an early Mitsubishi scooter. The Silver Pigeon range was originally based on the American Salsbury scooter, The story goes that a Japanese engineer at General Motors had brought one back from America, Mitsubishi saw the potential in it and asked him to join them on making a copy of it. As the first Silver Pigeon prototype was made in 1946 and went in to production in 1947 and that the first Silver Pigeon more resembled the pre-war Salisburys it was likely that a pre-war model was copied.
The Silver Pigeon range developed: initially closely following Salsbury designs but soon forging their own path. And by the late fifties Silver Pigeons were being exported to the States and sold by Montgomery Ward.
The Silver Pigeon in this image is a C-25 which was current from 1950 to 1952 and still resembles a Salsbury. As a point of interest note the trafficators (turn signals) mounted on the handlebars.
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| Mitsubishi Silver Pigeon C-25 scooter. |
Those are some ugly turn signals! In fact, while the design more or less works together there is no aspect of it that shows much gracefulness. That front fender is very odd.
ReplyDeleteIndeed the signals are ugly! Very incongruous and I think the only time I have seen trafficators on a two wheeler. Hard to see an advantage of them over hand signals unless one was riding at night but back then I believe traffic would have been very slight. As for the mudguard, odd indeed but thank the Salsbury design guys for that one!
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