Seventy-five years ago this spring, motorcycling – or, to be precise, powered two-wheelers – changed forever when the very first scooter was launched.
Spawned from the rubble of post-WW2 Italy, produced by an aircraft company banned from making planes, designed famously by a motorcycle-hating helicopter engineer and intended to mobilise a population with a devastated transport network, that scooter was the very first Vespa.
And, despite a slightly stuttering start, it proved so successful that within a handful of years it was being produced in its tens of thousands around the globe.
By the 1960s it was a cultural icon in movies and fashion. By the ’80s it was a stand-alone brand reigning over the whole scooter sector and today is one of the most recognisable two-wheelers of all with almost 20 million sold.
Not bad for an initially misunderstood utility vehicle whose prototype’s ‘pinched waist’ step-thru’ design prompted company boss Enrico Piaggio to exclaim: "It looks like a wasp!" (Vespa being Italian for wasp). Little did he know then how it would transform the world...
That first Vespa owes its creation – like many other motorcycle firms launched in the post-WW2 era – to a unique set of circumstances. Until 1939, Italian company Piaggio was a diverse transportation manufacturer with no history of powered two-wheelers.
Founded in Genoa in 1884 by Rinaldo Piaggio, it initially undertook ship fitting before going on to produce rail carriages and trams. World War One saw it start to make aircraft.
By WW2, Piaggio was one of Italy’s largest aeroplane manufacturers which is exactly why its plants became targets and were destroyed during the war.
With Italy signing an armistice in September 1943, however, Italian business could begin looking to the future. Rinaldo’s successors, sons Enrico and Armando, started restructuring Piaggio and Enrico, being responsible for the destroyed aeronautic plant but with aeroplane manufacture banned, decided to use the company’s aircraft manufacturing facilities to instead create low cost personal transport for the masses.
A first prototype known as the MP5 surfaced in 1944, featuring small wheels and bodywork enclosing the central engine. However, Piaggio was unconvinced by its awkward, tall central section and the machine gained the unflattering nickname ‘Paperino’ (Italian for Donald Duck) due to its ungainly form.
Around the same time another Italian industrial giant was thinking along similar lines. Innocenti, based in Milan’s Lambrate suburb which specialized in seamless tubular steel, was also looking to affordable two-wheelers.
Founder Ferdinando Innocenti had noticed the US Army’s military Cushman machines during the war and was inspired to create his own utility vehicle. Innocenti hired Corradino D’Ascanio, a highly experienced aeronautical designer, and asked him to design a powered two-wheeler that would be easy to ride for both men and women, able to carry a passenger and not get its rider’s clothes dirty.
Read the full article at: -
https://www.motorcyclenews.com/advice/inspiration/weekend-reads/the-history-of-vespa/
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