Belgian Cushman: scooters with limited production between 1951 and 1958.

Belgian Cushman was a Belgian brand of scooters created after World War II. It began as Les Ateliers de Fontaine l'Evêque, a company originally focused on making mining products, but after the war there was little demand for those products. So the company's director, Mr Lagae, decided to make use of leftover US army stock and started producing scooters.

The first scooter presented by the company in 1949 was based on the American Cushman Model 53 Airborne scooter. However, this scooter had much more sheet metal than the original version and did not have suspension. The design was only a preliminary version, but it already showed the direction the company wanted to take. In 1950, Les Ateliers de Fontaine l'Evêque acquired a licence to produce Cushman scooters, but the Belgian models were not exact copies of the American scooters.

The brand's first scooters were based on the Cushman Auto-Glide Model 32 or Model 34 (two-wheelers) and the Cushman Auto-Glide Model 39 Package-Kar (a three-wheeled triporteur). Production of the prototypes was slow and there was much tinkering with the design. The result was a model with a distinctive shield on the front fork, which provided extra wind protection for the driver-a feature the American version did not have.

Series production began in 1951, but the number of scooters produced remained limited, at around six per week. Production of Belgian Cushman scooters finally ended in 1955 or 1958, depending on the source. Despite its limited production and relatively short lifespan, the brand remains an interesting piece of Belgian motor scooter history. Only a few Belgian Cushman scooters are currently known to exist.