The Italian aircraft factory Piaggio, which was looking for a new application after the end of World War II, eventually co-defined one category of single-track vehicles. Scooters – small hooded motorcycles, designed mainly for the city – were created a few decades earlier and after the war appeared in defeated Japan, for example, but the Italian company made a “hole in the world” with them. The history of the Vespa brand began on April 23, 1946, when Piaggio applied for a patent for its scooter.
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Vespa 98 from 1946
Photo: Piaggio
The first attempt by a manufacturer from the small Tuscan town of Pontedera for a compact motorcycle was born during the war, but the MP5 did not take on much elegance. Enric Piaggio did not like the type called Paperino after the Italian name Duck Donald, who turned to aircraft designer Corradino D’Ascania. And because he had dealt with scooters before, he quickly found a solution.
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He originally developed the scooter for the industrialist Ferdinand Innocenti, but due to differing ideas about the construction of the frame, they parted ways – and when Piaggio needed help, D’Ascanio was ready. At the drawing board, he was inspired by scooters from the American company Cushman, which were used, for example, by American paratroopers, and after the war there were a lot of them left in Italy, but he certainly didn’t just copy them. For practical and aesthetic reasons, he moved the engine with the gearbox next to the rear wheel and mainly designed an elegant frame pressed from sheet metal.
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Vespa 125 from 1951
Photo: Piaggio
The new scooter thus got a typical shape, which also gave it a name. “Just a vespa!” Enrico Piaggio declared when he looks like a wasp! Like this insect, the scooter was given a distinctive rear end, which is connected to the handlebars and the aerodynamic cover of the driver only by a subtle floor. And when you added the buzzing sound of a 98cc engine (on series models with forced fan cooling), the name Vespa was born.
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Pontedera factory in 1950
Photo: Piaggio
In post-war Italy, the new scooter quickly gained popularity and made a significant contribution to the country’s motorization. By the end of 1946, about 2,300 scooters had been sold, the following year it was already 10,000 pieces, and in 1950, when the Vespa began production in Germany, it was 50,000 scooters.
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The millionth Vespa was sold in 1956, two million was surpassed four years later, and the magical limit of ten million fell in the late 1980s. To date, the total number of pieces produced has exceeded 20 million.
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Vespa indelibly inscribed itself in the hearts of the Italians, enabling them not only to travel around cities, but also to go on trips with it. It was not until the mid-1950s that cars, the Fiat 600, introduced in 1955, and especially the smaller Fiat 500, which was two years younger, began to take over its role as a family vehicle. centimeters came to 150 thousand lire, it cost “five hundred” half a million, roughly an annual worker’s salary.
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Racing Vespa in Dakar in 1980
Photo: Piaggio
The elegant Vespa, which has retained its basic shapes to this day and found a number of more or less successful copies during the three quarters of a century, has also become one of the cultural icons of the 20th century. On Vespa, for example, Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn raced in the famous film Holidays in Rome in 1953 or members of the London subculture of so-called mods. Today, its round shapes are an integral part of the color of Italian cities, but it finds loyal fans all over the world.
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Vespa Elettrica from 2018
Photo: Piaggio
However, the company also experienced a worse period, especially since the 1980s, when scooters began to lose the battle with increasingly available cars. Despite economic difficulties and changes of ownership, it managed to survive and Vespa became not only a popular means of transport for congested cities, but also a symbol of Italian elegance.
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Annual Vespa 75 ° from 2021
Photo: Piaggio
Even thanks to numerous fans, the brand may want more money for its machines – the basic “one hundred and twenty-one” Vespa will cost 115 thousand crowns, similar scooters from competing brands can easily be bought a fifth cheaper.
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