# 1950 Swallow Gadabout Scooter (from the company that made Jaguar cars)



## Wing Your Heel (Nov 20, 2013)

Here's my 1950 Swallow Gadabout Scooter

122cc Villiers 2-stroke

The design was influenced by the American Cushman scooter.

Swallow made sidecars, and also (as SS Cars Ltd) they made the Jaguar car (they changed the name from SS to Jaguar in 1945 because of the nazi use of the initials)













Observe the exhaust - it exits through the frame tubing!







Sun shone yesterday. While I was taking photos on the hill overlooking our village, a jogger stopped to admire the scooter. I handed him my iPhone and asked him to film me riding it. Luckily he did not run off with the phone. So I made this video 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cLN8DuEsFc&feature=youtu.be


Full info and pics here


http://www.oldbike.eu/museum/engines/post-ww2/1950-swallow-gadabout-scooter/


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## thehugheseum (Nov 20, 2013)

nice! great video! never had heard of this scooter,thanks for sharing as always


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## sam (Nov 22, 2013)




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## bricycle (Nov 22, 2013)

I dunno...that's all pretty hard to "swallow".....


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## Wing Your Heel (Nov 25, 2013)

*Gadding about*

Yes, well spotted Sam. Phillips co-opted the name for their new moped after Swallow's scooter had disappeared. Too good a name to waste?

The marque specialist tells me less than 2000 of these scooters were made (the company claimed that quantity, but it is now known that they exaggerated). 

And only 25 or so now known to exist.

The Mark 2 is the rarest, as most manufactured were the earlier model.


But Great Britain was not the only country to have a Gadabout, as the photo and caption below reveals -

Detroit, Oct 12 1944 – Post war car? Here is the latest model automobile. Just completed by Ray Russell, president of the Detroit Industrial Designers’ Association, shown at the wheel, it is called the “Gadabout.” Built largely of aluminum and magnesium on an 80-inch wheelbase it weighs 1,100 pounds. Russell believes it has post war possibilities.


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## bricycle (Nov 25, 2013)

Cool Car!!!


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