History

THE BIRTH OF A LEGEND
The Vespa (which means “wasp” in Italian) was the result of Enrico Piaggio’s determination to create a low cost product for the masses. As the war drew to a close, Enrico studied every possible solution to get production in his plants going again. A motor scooter was produced, based on a small motorcycle made for parachutists. The prototype, known as the MP5, was nicknamed “Paperino” (the Italian name for Donald Duck) because of its strange shape, but Enrico Piaggio did not like it, and he asked Corradino D’Ascanio to redesign it. But the aeronautical designer did not like motorcycles. He found them uncomfortable and bulky, with wheels that were difficult to change after a puncture. Worse still, the drive chain made them dirty. However, his aeronautical experience found the answer to every problem. To eliminate the chain he imagined a vehicle with a stress-bearing body and direct mesh; to make it easier to ride, he put the gear lever on the handlebar; to make tyre changing easier he designed not a fork, but a supporting arm similar to an aircraft carriage. Finally, he designed a body that would protect the driver so that he would not get dirty or dishevelled. Decades before the spread of ergonomic studies, the riding position of the Vespa was designed to let you sit comfortably and safely, not balanced dangerously as on a high-wheel motorcycle.Corradino D’Ascanio only needed a few days to refine his idea and prepare the first drawings of the Vespa, first produced in Pontedera in April 1946. It got its name from Enrico Piaggio himself who, looking at the MP 6 prototype with its wide central part where the rider sat and the narrow “waist”, exclaimed, “It looks like a wasp!” And so the Vespa was born.

And it was copied: on June 9, 1957, Izvestia reported the start of production in Kirov, in the USSR, of the Viatka 150 cc, an almost perfect clone of the Vespa.Piaggio had begun very early on to extend its range into the light transport sector. In 1948, soon after the birth of the Vespa, production of the three-wheeler Ape van (the Italian for “bee”) derived from the scooter began, and the vehicle was an immediate success for its many possible uses. Numerous imaginative versions of the Vespa appeared, some from Piaggio itself, but mainly from enthusiasts – for example, the Vespa Sidecar, or the Vespa-Alpha of 1967, developed with Alpha-Wallis for Dick Smart, a screen secret agent, which could race on the road, fly, and even be used on or underwater. The French army had a few Vespa models built specially to carry arms and bazookas, and others that could be parachuted together with the troops. Even the Italian army asked Piaggio for a parachutable scooter.

1956: THE VESPA CROSSES THE ONE MILLION MARK

While the Lambretta was starting to enjoy some success, the Vespa was being copied and imitated in a thousand ways: but the uniqueness of the vehicle ensured Piaggio a very long period of success, so much so that in November 1953, the 500,000th unit left the line, followed by the one millionth in June 1956. In 1960 the Vespa passed the two million mark; in 1970 it reached four million, and over ten million in 1988, making it a unique phenomenon in the motorised two-wheeler sector it has sold over 16 million units to date.From 1946 to 1965, the year Enrico Piaggio died, 3,350,000 Vespas were manufactured in Italy alone: one for every fifty inhabitants.The boom of the Vespa, and the different business prospects of the Piaggio brothers, with Enrico concentrating on light individual mobility in Tuscany and Armando on the aeronautical business in Liguria, led the company to split. On February 22, 1964, Enrico Piaggio acquired the share in Piaggio & C. S.p.A. held by his brother Armando, who then founded “Rinaldo Piaggio Industrie Meccaniche Aeronautiche” (I.A.M. Rinaldo Piaggio).The Vespa 50 had appeared the previous year, 1963, following the introduction of a law in Italy making a numberplate obligatory on two-wheelers over 50 cc. The new scooter was exempt from this law and was an immediate success. In Italy sales of vehicles with numberplates decreased by 28 per cent in 1965 compared to the previous year. On the other hand, the Vespa, with its new “50” series, was a great success. The light Vespa was a successful addition to the Piaggio range and this displacement is still in production. To date almost 3,500,000 Vespa 50s have been built in different models and versions, the latest being the ET4 50 launched in autumn 2000. It is the first four stroke Vespa 50cc, and has a record range of over 500 km with a full tank.The Vespa PX (125, 150 and 200cc) is the biggest sales success in the entire history of the Vespa. It is the “original vintage” – launched in 1977, it has sold over two million units, and as such is a favourite among those with a sense of nostalgia but also with the younger market.

Few know that in 1980 two Vespa PX 200s ridden by M. Simonot and B. Tcherniawsky reached the finishing line of the second Paris-Dakar rally. Four-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Henri Pescarolo helped the French team put together by Jean-François Piot.The Vespa continues to travel: in 1992 Giorgio Bettinelli, writer and journalist, left Rome on a Vespa and reached Saigon in March 1993. In 1994-95 he rode a Vespa 36,000 km from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. In 1995-96 he travelled from Melbourne to Cape Town – over 52,000 km in 12 months. In 1997 he started out from Chile, reaching Tasmania after three years and 150,000 km on his Vespa across the Americas, Siberia, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania. All in all, Bettinelli has travelled 254,000 km on a Vespa.

VESPA, THE CINEMA AND THE USA
Stylish and unmistakably Vespa, exceptionally comfortable to ride with low-environmental-impact engines and disk brakes, the new-generation ET models are now also sold in numerous “Vespa Boutiques” in the US (over 60 from California to Florida and from Hawaii to New York, with the latest two boutiques in SoHo and Queens). Having returned to the US in 2000 after exiting the market in 1985 because of new emissions legislation that targeted two stroke engines, the Vespa was an immediate success all over again, and has achieved a market share of 20 per cent of the small (40,000 units a year) but growing scooter sector. 6,000 Vespas were sold in the first year, 2001, and over 7,000 in 2002.

But the Vespa isn’t just a market phenomenon. It forms part of social history. In the “Dolce Vita” years the Vespa became a synonym for scooter, foreign reporters described Italy as “the country of the Vespa” and the Vespa’s role in social history, not just in Italy but abroad, can be seen from its presence in hundreds of films. And it’s a story that continues to be told today.Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in “Roman Holiday ” were only the first of a long series of international actors and actresses to be seen on the world’s most famous scooter in a filmography that goes from “Quadrophenia” to “American Graffiti”, from “The Talented Mr. Ripley” to “102 Dalmatians”, not to mention “Dear Diary “.In photo shoots, films and on the set, the Vespa has been a “travel companion” for names like Raquel Welch, Ursula Andress, Geraldine Chaplin, Joan Collins, Jayne Mansfield, Virna Lisi, Milla Jovovich, Marcello Mastroianni, Charlton Heston, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, Anthony Perkins, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Nanni Moretti, Sting, Antonio Banderas, Matt Damon, Gérard Depardieu, Jude Law, Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson.

When D’Ascanio designed the Vespa he started by tracing the outline of a person sitting comfortably as in his own drawing room, then drew the vehicle under him. This apparently simple idea revolutionised motorcycle design logic. D’Ascanio’s front shield was intended to protect the rider from splashes when travelling the pothole-filled post-war roads. He avoided using a transmission chain, placed a small spare wheel on the vehicle so that a punctured tyre would be nothing more than a minor inconvenience, and placed all the controls on the handlebar, making riding easier not only for men but, as he himself remarked, “for women and priests” as well. The Vespa philosophy was hence a mix of common sense, practicality and cost-effectiveness, with a series of intelligent features that together represented extraordinary productive creativity. The chief designer’s happy intuition was backed by the entrepreneurial vision of Enrico Piaggio, who courageously placed the vehicle on the market notwithstanding the difficulty of selling the first few vehicles produced in April 1946. He gave orders to produce another 2,500 Vespas although he had had an extremely hard time selling 50! He set up a sales company and a Piaggio dealer and service network in increasingly extended parts of Italy and overseas, introduced a concept of purchase in instalments that had until then been unknown in Europe and looked for and found partners in England, Germany, France and Spain.

All in all, he created the conditions to suit the production of a vehicle that would conquer the world. And so it was. The secret was neither the Vespa’s appealing design nor its ease of use or cost-effectiveness, but a combination of these factors and others that were not immediately perceived by the people who had thought up, produced and sold it. Parri had spoken of the Italian crisis and the difficulty of transport. Enrico Piaggio faced that problem and contributed to solving it, as did other manufacturers in different segments with varying degrees of success, such as Innocenti with the Lambretta, Guzzi with the Galletto, Fiat with its Topolino and so on. The transport problem was hence overcome and in the years to come the Vespa would become a symbol of economic, social and civil recovery of the whole country.

The Vespa immediately became an object sought out by those of all ages and financial situations. The lucky owners of a Vespa often met in large rallies, sharing a pure passion that led to extraordinary events, races and shows such as sea-crossing, obstacle races and extreme exploits such as crossing the Andes, or travelling the English Channel between Dover and Calais, or seemingly impossible trips such as to the North Pole on a Vespa. Not only did the transport boom accompany Italy’s economic miracle and the stability of a country that caught up in a few decades with an economic delay of centuries vis-à-vis more advanced nations, but the Vespa became a key element in influencing the habits, mentality and lifestyle of generations of young and older people. The scooter that fed people’s dreams played a starring role in some of the best-known films, and its ability to portray social issues kept it astonishingly modern from “Roman Holiday” through to Italian director Nanni Moretti’s “Dear Diary”. The actors’ fa-ces changed, as did the image of actresses dressed in the fashion of passing decades. Youngsters gambolled in cities and villages, men and women went to work and creative enthusiasts transformed their Vespas out of all imagination, demanding of the little scooter performances that constantly challenged mechanics and technology.

OBJECT OF DESIRE
Birth and History of an object of desire–Omar Calabrese
What a lovely name the Vespa has! No one really knows how it came to be named. It is said that during the experimental stage the prototype of what would become the most famous scooter in the world was called Paperino, Italian for Donald Duck. But company lore would have it that when Enrico Piaggio saw the definitive model which Corradino D’Ascanio showed him after having modified it to the entrepreneur’s specifications, he exclaimed: “It looks like a wasp!” And wasp – Vespa – it became. Never was a product’s name more appropriate. The wasp is in fact a likeable enough insect – individualistic, independent and Nature-loving, even if it can be dangerous and has no real use, not being capable of producing honey. It moves quickly, without stopping, more or less everywhere, interpreting the etymology of the word “scooter”, which comes from the verb scoot, meaning “to move swiftly; to go suddenly and speedily”. This nomenclature was, among other things, extremely lucky. It was a common noun which became a proper noun, the name of a vehicle, but then returned to being a common noun – in fact one says “the Vespa”, but also “a Vespa”, sometimes used generically to describe vehicles not produced by Piaggio. I believe that in product history a similar process took place with aspirin. Like any lucky name, the Vespa has given birth to a “family”.

All in all, it was what we might call “Italy’s Ford.” Hence it quickly became a myth: a worker’s myth, but also one of purchase, of families, of young couples, a myth of freedom within a hardworking and optimistic society. The myth carried on expanding in succeeding periods such as that of the economic boom or the generational change of the 1960s. In fact everything seemed to already be written into the product’s specifications. The boom saw the multiplication of models in tens of versions, from the most basic to the plushest. Automobile sales, on the increase in those years thanks to the Seicento and Cinquecento (Fiat’s Six Hundred and Five Hundred respectively) promoted the idea of the scooter as a saving grace in traffic. The production of the smallest displacement, the Vespa 50, followed a law that permitted it to be ridden without a licence plate or driving licence. It became the steed of the young. The earliest pollution warnings and ideological anti-pollution campaigns that followed led to the Vespa being seen as an antidote. And thus its history was made – “Vespa yourselves!”, “With a Vespa you can”, “Vespa riders eat the apple”, “Unlike commuter sardines Vespa riders are young” and so on, in a succession of messages that, re-read today, do not seem banal advertising campaigns but almost forerunners of a common “political” sentiment, or at the very least examples of attention towards social issues that is unusual in the history of Italian industry.

The Vespa lives on in the imagination of many generations of Italians (and Europeans and Americans and Africans and Asians), and not just because it is an iconic object. The Vespa is also one of the elements that forms a stable part of the landscape of our everyday lives. There aren’t many of these – Coca Cola, Swatch, Polaroid, the Walkman, tennis shoes and maybe cars like the Dyane, the Beetle and the Cinquecento are a few of the names that leap to mind. Hence the Vespa became an involuntary character of (i.e. didn’t bribe its way into) the arts and letters. We find it in the scenario of tens of films (the total number of Vespa-starrers is 83!), some of which are very well known, e.g. “Roman Holiday”, “La dolce vita” and “Dear Diary”, to name only the top three. It is a character in books by writers such as Folco Quilici, Gino and Michele or Vitaliano Brancati. It was snapped by Renato Guttuso and decorated by Salvador Dalì. It was photographed alongside the Pope, the Shah of Iran and the vice-presidents of India and Brazil. Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Ursula Andress and Audrey Hepburn rode it. Jacovitti made it the object of his comic strips. And even pop music, mainly outside Italy, used it. It even has a song all to itself – a tango, of course, titled La Vespa y la Guapa (the wasp and the beauty).

Most importantly, however, the Vespas has been immortalised in millions of family photos, an object that accompanies personal memories and trips, as is witnessed by the thousands of Vespa Clubs created all over the world starting from the 1940s, with their rallies, periodicals and correspondence networks. They still exist, in a modern version – navigation on the Internet can reveal websites created by groups of Americans still in the thrall of the Italian scooter. The “aesthetic” aspect of the Vespa’s presence in the Western world has always been reflected in the communication that accompanies its production.

In various periods the Vespa campaigns have been able to anticipate mass trends. Longanesi’s graphics, for instance, are linear, thin and witty in a time that didn’t use poetic trends in advertising. Savignac’s strong, scintillating designs preceded pop art. The legendary “Vespa riders eat the apple” campaign’s graphics introduced mature pop art in Italy and pre-announced the mutation of pop art into the hippie and new dada styles. Dear old Vespa, always so modern. The Vespa is probably an immortal objet that unites generations and social classes, sexes, tastes and trends. A rapid overview of the themes that have featured in the communication of the Vespa shows us the overall evolution of Italian society (and perhaps all of Western society).First, the emancipation of the less fortunate classes during the reconstruction. Alongside this, the emergence of the young as individual entities with their own dignity, desires and destinies. Then women, transformed into independent individuals and no longer accompanying the rider. The environment is another topic that was emphasized in Vespa communication at a time in which it was not a real issue and had not yet been taken into consideration by politicians and progressive movements. But the Vespa could do all this because it is one of those objects capable of defining a country, Italy, that has few other “distinguishing marks” on its modern-day passport – pizza, pasta, coffee, O Sole mio, Venice, the Siena Palio, panettone (spiced brioche with sultanas eaten at Christmas), fashion and Borsalino hats. But while all these give an idea of the tradition and culture of the past, the Vespa also offers invention and modernity, with the dash of sentiment, originality and moderated revolution that this rather progressive vehicle knows how to add. The Vespa’s traits are lovely, but it is essentially made for those who aren’t well off. It amuses without forgetting its primary utilitarian function. It is free and nonconformist, without letting itself go as far as the roars and violence of speed. The engineer Corradino D’Ascanio of the Marches, a democratic man who invented the Vespa by borrowing bits and pieces of motorcycles and aeroplanes, would be glad that its 50-plus years of life haven’t taken away any of the lightness and depth of his little big “scooter”