For France's Mobylette moped, a fond adieu
The beloved putt-putt's high-pitched squeal has long echoed through Gallic streets and culture, but it now joins the Citroen 2CV, the beret, and fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent among icons to fade from the French scene.
Once the epitome of teenage cool, the Mobylette has fallen to fickle modern tastes and tough new pollution legislation.
Unveiled in 1949, and recently immortalized in the hit movie "Amelie," the last of about 30 million French-built Mobylettes rolled off production lines last week at a factory in St. Quentin, northeast France.
"For us, it was the turning of a very important page," said Pedro Alvarez, head of the now Japanese-owned MBK factory. "It pains the heart a little."
Despite the country's fondness for it, the Mobylette, with its two-stroke engine, was no match for European anti-pollution legislation that comes into force next year.
But it was not only emission restrictions that doomed it. Only 11,000 Mobylettes are expected to be sold this year, at $1,200 apiece. Sales in 1974 were 750,000.
Mobylettes were not known for their beauty. The standard model was little more than a reinforced bicycle, with a light up front and a motor where the pedals should be. But they are sturdy, reliable, cheap, easy to maintain and, as arguably the most famous moped brand, sold incredibly well.
About half of the 30 million Mobylettes sold since 1949 were a model nicknamed "la bleue" — "the blue" — so called because they first sold in just one color. Production of that model stopped in mid-November, Alvarez said.
Mobylettes carried young lovers on first dates and farmers to market. Postmen used them to deliver mail, and teenagers — allowed by law to ride them without a license at 14 — souped up the engines to race.
"In the 1970s, 'les bleues' were really something. Every young person dreamed of having one," said Maurice Bernot, a 50-year-old computer engineer who started saving at age 10 to buy his first Mobylette four years later. "This Mobylette is mythic."
But few self-respecting French teenagers would ride one to school now. "Their friends would laugh at them," said Alvarez, at the factory.