The Mitsubishi Silver Pigeon is a series of scooters made in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...

between 1946 and 1963.Mitsubishi scooters
scootermaniac.org The first was the C-10, based on a scooter imported from the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

by Koujiro Maruyama, which began production at the Nagoya Machinery Works of

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is a Japanese multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group and its automobile division is the predecessor of Mitsubishi ...

.Silver Pigeon C-10
, Mitsubishi Motors Web Museum Along with the Mizushima

three-wheeler A three-wheeler is a vehicle with three wheels. Some are motorized tricycles, which may be legally classed as motorcycles, while others are tricycles without a motor, some of which are human-powered vehicles and animal-powered vehicles. O ...

pickup truck A pickup truck or pickup is a light-duty truck that has an enclosed cabin, and a back end made up of a cargo bed that is enclosed by three low walls with no roof (this cargo bed back end sometimes consists of a tailgate and removable covering) ...

it represented Mitsubishi's first contributions to the Japanese

post-war In Western usage, the phrase post-war era (or postwar era) usually refers to the time since the end of World War II. More broadly, a post-war period (or postwar period) is the interval immediately following the end of a war. A post-war period ...

personal transport boom."Rebuilding the Nation"
, Mitsubishi Motors History, Mitsubishi Motors South Africa website The Silver Pigeon's primary competitor was the

Fuji Rabbit The Fuji Rabbit is a motor scooter produced in Japan by Fuji Heavy Industries (now Subaru Corporation) from 1946 through 1968. The Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan rates the Fuji Rabbit S-1 model introduced in 1946 as one of their ''240 ...

(and in 1954, the

Honda Juno The Honda Juno is a scooter. Two versions were produced, the K-series of 1954 (K, KA, KB), and the M-series of 1962 (M80, M85). Juno K The Juno K was a deliberately elaborate bike in 1954. It was Honda's first scooter and would be competing w ...

). Motor scooters were so important to the post-war vehicle industry that In May 1948 both a Silver Pigeon and a Rabbit were presented to the Emperor of Japan. The Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan lists the Silver Pigeon C-10 model introduced in 1946 as one of their ''240 Landmarks of Japanese Automotive Technology''. The Silver Pigeon proved sufficiently successful to remain in production for almost twenty years. ''Motor Cyclist'' magazine voted it "best in styling" for three consecutive years in the 1950s, a decade after its introduction, while from 1950 to 1964 it maintained an average 45 percent share of the domestic scooter market.Silver Pigeon
, Mitsubishi Motors South Africa website American retailer

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curr ...

imported the Silver Pigeon and sold it via their catalog under the Riverside captive import brand. By the time production came to an end in 1963 over 463,000 had been manufactured, with the 1960 C-200 proving the most popular individual model, with almost 38,000 sales. Mitsubishi_Silver_Pigeon.jpg, Mitsubishi Silver Pigeon Mitsubishi_Silver_Pigeon_birdseye.jpg, Birds-eye view Mitsubishi_Silver_Pigeon_dashboard.jpg, Dashboard

References

External links

"What's a Silver Pigeon?"
Marvin Wuehle, silverpigeons.com

Max's scooter page {{Mitsubishi Motors vehicles Silver Pigeon Motor scooters Motorcycles of Japan Motorcycle manufacturers of Japan Motorcycles introduced in the 1940s

See also

References

External links