Automatic scooters may seem like a modern invention, but believe it or not, a motorcycle company was producing them more than 60 years ago.
Many scooterists will assume that modern ‘twist-and-go’ scooters are a relatively new technology. In fact, automatic transmission was invented more than 100 years ago, and it first appeared on a scooter in the mid-1950s. However, it was in 1959 – when Edward Turner, the chief designer for Triumph Motorcycles, patented a design for an automatic transmission engine – that the Tina story began.
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The Tina was launched in the early 1960s, and it seems rather strange that Triumph, its manufacturer, decided to go down this route. By now, the company’s Tigress scooter had been available for a few years, and its sales were struggling. It was far removed from
