Back in day, say in the 1970s, if you were sixteen and craving independence, you didn’t get a bus ticket, you bought yourself a shiny moped. 

There was a good selection to choose from back in those days too as they really were a thing. You could become the proud owner of a splendid little Yamaha FS1-E if you were lucky, a Suzuki AP50 if your parents were stingy, or something Belgian with pedals if the universe hated you. They were noisy, smoky, nippy and subtle as a chainsaw, but represented freedom.

Fast-forward to Britain today and the moped market seems to have collapsed under an underwhelming lack of interest. In 1977 Yamaha sold around 200,000 Fizzy mopeds in Britain alone. These days, however, the entire country only manages about 1,400 mopeds p.a. That’s really not a viable  market for any manufacturer today.

Could it be that the moped is just not cool now, in this age of Instagram self marketing, and has perhaps been replaced by the electric bicycle? Unlike the moped of yore, electric bicycles don’t rattle, don’t smoke, and don't even make a noise. They are cheaper than buying a moped today and need no tax, no insurance and no licence. Last year Britons bought roughly 165,000 e-bikes - that’s more than a hundred for every moped sold. 

Then there’s infrastructure. Councils have been painting cycle lanes like crazy, with London alone rolling out over 160 miles of segregated cycle routes. A moped lane however - nah - you'll be looking forever.

And regulations? Mopeds today are restricted to 28mph by law. In the 1970s, a tuned Fizzy would zoom past you at 60mph with a tearaway teen clinging on grinning madly. Nowadays you’d be overtaken by a Deliveroo rider on an e-bike. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, your modern 16-year-old no longer seems to want a moped.

Insurance costs haven’t helped either: a new rider’s policy on a moped can easily top a frightening £800 a year, while an e-bike requires no policy, no MOT, and no visit to the DVLA. You just plug it in, point it at the traffic jam, and off you go.

The times they are indeed a changing. The favourite moped of the past has now become a collector's item, and a nice old Fizzy can fetch £10,000 at auction. Even an old Honda SS50, once sneered at for being slower than the Yamaha, can fetch several thousand quid today.

So yes, it would seem that the moped is dead. Crushed beneath the quiet, march of the e-bike. It was fun while it lasted, but when one market is down by a quarter year-on-year and the other is up fivefold in a decade, you know which way the wind is blowing and that wind is not carrying the fresh evocative aroma of a two stroke engine and the frantic fizzing sound of a nippy little moped.

Did you own a moped once upon a time? Would you trade it in for an electric bike? When did you last even see one? If you did have a moped we'd love to see a picture of it. Email us at: [email protected] or post it on Facebook or Instagram.