Lambretta brand in the US?

According to yesterday’s post by Visordown, Lambretta is returning to the UK market in June. Great news!

Actually, the 2011 Innocenti series scooters are also posted as a part of their collection on Lambretta Consortium’s USA website. So, does this mean they are also entering the US market in 2011? Lambretta Consortium is the legitimate successor of the former Italian company Innocenti. And according to their website, Lambretta SRL also in the consortium, is the global owner of the brand Lambretta.

For those of you who are not familiar with the history of Lambretta; the manufacturing and trademark rights of the italian Lambretta, were acquired by the Scooters India Ltd. in the early seventies. And then we started seeing new generation Lambretta branded scooters on the streets. But these didn’t have the style or any resemblance to their predecessors. These were scooters by Lambretta International. On their website they say they are the “Official site of Lambretta Scooters”. The company behind Lambretta International is Khurana Group USA LLC, which was officially licensed by Scooters India Ltd. to manufacture and distribute scooters in the US with the Lambretta brand. When they entered the market in 2008, rather than coming up with a new design, the company actually just rebranded Taiwanese Adly scooters.

So, what will happen here? Are we going to see scooters from different manufacturers with the same brand name in the US? How are we going to distinguish the two brands?