By now, if you know my tastes even a little bit, you know I have a soft spot in my heart for many things both strange and vintage. Including and especially scooters and bizarre motorbikes. Think, for instance, of the Suzuki SW1. Or this sweet, funky little vintage KTM scooter from the 1950s.
In fact, I'm honestly a little shocked that I've never written about a Zundapp Bella before, because I can absolutely swear I've seen at least one at some vintage bike show I've visited in the last decade. Yet somehow, I haven't. Although, I suppose I did share the strange tale of the Zundapp Citation 500 with you all back in 2021, so that has to count for something.
Anyway, another thing you may or may not know about me is that in the modern era, I love naked bikes. Generally speaking, they tend to be my personal favorites. I've already talked your ear off about my Street Triple, and my Hawk GT 650, and that's probably the biggest uniting factor between them.
I also enjoy scooters. But every time I take the bodywork off of mine, I'm reminded why naked scooters aren't usually much of a thing. They're just not as easy to package in an attractive way, for whatever reason.
It's the furthest possible thing from modern, but a rare US-only Zundapp scooter called the Suburbanette is seemingly proof that this isn't a new concept. I mean, look at this thing. It's, um, certainly a sight to behold. I promise I didn't rip my eyeballs directly out of their sockets while writing this article.
Now, I get why you'd want to remove the bodywork from the Zundapp Bella that was stripped off to get this Suburbanette variant. Especially when it reportedly resulted in a shocking 26 kilogram (over 57 pound) weight decrease, since the bodywork on the Bella is steel. And equally, there's no denying the fact that maintenance and/or service would be that much easier because you wouldn't have to pull the bodywork off first.
But still, it's clear that Zundapp probably wasn't intending all its engine internals to be on display like this, because aesthetically, it's a bit of a mess. It doesn't look intentional; instead, it looks like what it is, which is a fully faired machine that's had its bodywork removed for some reason.
Mind you, this isn't meant to be any kind of comment on how it rides. I've never ridden one, so I can't offer an opinion there. It's just a bit strange to me that, if the US was going to get a variant of the Bella meant only for our market, this was what got specced. Obviously, the 1950s were a very different time, because this is definitely neither bella nor bellissimo.
What do you think, am I being too hard on this little scoot? Do you (or did you) have either a Bella or a Suburbanette? Let me know in the comments!
