My assumption was they were trying to shoehorn in the gang as a throwback to greaser hotrod culture (by way of mod scooter culture) since George Lucas was into that when he was a teenager, but it was so jarringly bad in an already bad series that it just came across as cringy and laughable. It didn't help that those scenes were filmed incredibly clumsily and all the scooter gang characters were annoyingly tryhard.