Simson was a German general engineering company founded in the middle of the 19th century. It started manufacturing guns and gun barrels, but diversified into bicycles in 1896 and cars in 1907. In 1936 the Jewish Simson family was forced to flee the country, but the business continued under a different name and new management. After the war, it passed first into the hands of the Soviet Union, then back to the German Democratic Republic, mainly concentrating on the manufacture of motorcycles. In 1955 the Simson name was revived.
The SR50 model started production in 1986. It was a slightly strange mixture of a motor scooter and a moped. It had the step-through frame, footboards and leg shields and small wheels of a motor scooter, but those wheels and the front forks were exposed like a moped.
The model was published first in 1994, and then reprinted in 2003, which is the version I have. It is scaled 1:15, so (unusually) I had to enlarge it by 7% to 1:14. It has a simple rather toylike appearance, but I chose to stick with that and make few changes. I found it necessary to redraw some parts, notably the yokes for the front forks, to deal with some severe fit problems, and I also made most of the cylindrical parts from rolled paper rather than the wooden skewers and wire suggested.
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