Kees van der Westen:

From 1995 till 2004 we built the Mistral series of espresso machines, using boilers and groups from La Marzocco. During those days we also were the official importer of La Marzocco machines for the Netherlands. Through the years we acquired some of the old type paddle-groups from the GS machines. As we could not bring ourselves to dump these we eventually decided to use these in a fun-project: building a small series of one-group machines, especially designed to use these groups for their proper purpose. This machine was called Speedster. A total of six were built in 2001 and sold remarkably quick to friends and relatives.