Klaus Wolf the founder of Retro Scooter Palace first began his “love affair” with scooters when he was 16 years of age.

His first experience with a scooter was a small Vespa 50cc, which was the only mode of transport in Germany that could be ridden without a licence and was very cheap to run.

After cruising around on the 50cc for several years he managed to get his licence when he was 18 and bought his first big touring scooter which was a Heinkel tourist scooter.  This scooter is still part of Klaus’ scooter collection and is still ridden on a daily basis.

His “love affair” continued when he traveled on his scooter to  amazing countries like Holland, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain touring throughout the countryside and stopping in quaint country towns for his renowned coffee drinking.

Apart from his coffee drinking there also came the necessity to learn how to survive on the open road by learning how to dismantle, fix, and restore those old beauties.

Studying design for several years, obtaining every welding certificate possible and doing a course in mechanical repairs gave Klaus the qualifications to fix and restore motor scooters so that they could comply with the German road standards.

In the time that Klaus had his own design shop in Berlin he owned around 70 vintage scooters of all kinds, nationalities and conditions.

When Klaus moved to Australia in the early 90’s it seemed impossible to ship 70 scooters with him, so he sold 67 and shipped 3 of them.

At that time in Australia it was unlikely to see any vintage scooters on the road.  Whilst scootering around the streets of Melbourne the general comment from the public was “can’t you afford a real bike you poor bastard?”