1959 CZ / Jawa Cezeta
It’s no secret among my friends that I am a closet Scooter lover, I really want one. In my years selling motorcycles and scooters I have ridden quite a few and delivered a lot to customers. The most fun delivery I did was I rode the scooter to the buyers home and they took me back to the dealership. When I got ready to leave the shop, I plotted the longest way possible to get to their house and figured out how to ‘get lost’ on my way. It was a great delivery. On the way back to the shop, I told them what I had done, under the guise of starting the break in process for them…they got a big kick out of it.
The modern scooters are great but when I get one it is going to be a classic and the one I found on ebay today would be right up my alley. It’s funky, it’s weird and it’s really cool…a CZ/Jawa Cezeta 501.
The Cezeta was a very futuristic design by the Czech company and technologically quite advanced. It was powered by the standard CZ/Jawa 175cc 2 stroke motor with a top speed of around 55mph, that will get you run over by little old ladies in Toyota Corona’s here on the Southern California freeways…hell, it’ll get you run over on most surface streets by kids on skateboards!! But, for 1959 it was plenty fast.
Other than being a bit underpowered for current times the Cezeta had many technological features that are being used today. The motor is rubber mounted to smooth the vibration, a dual exhaust added a bit of performance,and uses a single sided swingarm for handling and light weight. But, the most unique feature of the Cezeta scooter is the gas tank placement…it’s over the front wheel! Whether that did anything for handling, who knows but what it did do for the scooter was give it more storage space under the seat and give it the most unique style in all scooterdom. Cezeta owners joke that with the fuel tank up front if you ran into anything your bike became a torpedo…KABOOM! Lesson here…don’t run into anything.
I found a really nice Cezeta on ebay that was restored just five years ago and looks to be ready to ride. The scooter has a bit over 30,000 miles on the clock but the motor was completely redone,and the paint was redone to original. The scoot has only been ridden twice since the rebuild so chances are the carb needs a good cleaning and probably a new battery. But, this little Italian beauty looks ready to go.
If you are looking for a really cool scooter that you can pretty much assured that nobody within 500 miles has one like it, check this little Cezeta out. Click on the pics below for more info and more pictures. I wish I had room in my garage (and money in my bank account) to get this one.
1959 CZ/Jawa Cezeta