History of Piaggio and Vespa Motor scooters
(Based on How to Restore and Maintain Your Vespa Motor scooter Book, by Bob Darnell & Bob Golfen)
The Vespa motor scooter is emblematic of all that is romantic and carefree about the Continental lifestyle, a virtual symbol of Italy, and a stylistic icon readily connected with youth and adventure. For many parts of the world, Vespa scooter are also a workhorse of basic transportation, a ubiquitous urban presence in European and Asian nation – the buzzing of motor scooter is still heard throughout ancient alleys and wide boulevard. With more than 15 million sold in a half-century of production, Vespa models are far and away the best-selling motor scooter of all time.
For Italians, the Vespa scooter has a broader meaning, symbolic of their country’s reemergence as a major industrial power from the shambles of World War II. It shows how a complex economic problem can be reduced to the elegant simplicity of a motor scooter. And Vespa designs serve to demonstrate the Italian sense of style and innovation.
From its roots of providing basic transportation and the bare beginnings of economic survival for the people of Italy devastated by World War II, to its role as treed-setting fashion accessory during the turbulent 1960s, the Vespa motor scooter has retained its general design and overall mission. The style and culture fit in well with today’s youth, who appreciate the retro charm and post-industrial. Old scooters fauns parked in garages and basements are being resurrected, restored, and ridden by a new generation.
Piaggio, the company that developed and produces the Vespa scooter, goes back more that a century, founded in Genoa by Rinaldo Piaggio in 1884 as Societa Anonima Piaggio. Originally dedicated to producing woodworking machinery, the company was soon engaged in building railroad cars for the booming rail industry. Latter, the company built commercial vehicles, automobiles, and boats. During World War I, Piaggio began to take part in the fledgling aviation industry by making airplane parts in 1914, and the following year, entire airplane. Piaggio’s innovative bent soon emerged as he developed such advances as as pressurized cabins and retractable landing gear. An aviation engine designed by Piaggio set 20 word records during the 1920s.
In 1938, Rinaldo Piaggio died, leaving the company’s two factories in Tuscany to Enrico Piaggio, 33, and his younger brother, Armando, 31. The timing for two young industrialist to take over their father’s business couldn’t have been worse, as fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had cemented his power in Italy and was poised to enter a pact for world conquest with Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolph Hitler.
During the war, the factories cranked out aircraft for the Axis war effort, developing several fighters and Italy’s only heavy bomber. Naturally, the factories became prime targets for Allied bombing raids. They were hit again and again, and at war’s end, the factory lay in ruins, and more than 10,000 Piaggio employees were out of work. But then, much of Italy was a shambles, all its industries bombed and destroyed, its people poverty stricken and demoralized. Under terms of the Allied peace agreement, Piaggio was banned from producing aircraft, which left Enrico Piaggio, who by then had taken over the business, casting about for a new product once he had rebuilt a factory in which to produce it.
NECESSITY, THE MOTHER OF VESPA
Transportation was a struggle in post-war Italy. Automobiles were expensive and in extremely short supply, even if people could find enough gasoline to run them. Most of Italy’s workforce depended on a scant number of bicycles to fulfill modest transportation needs. Piaggio, with his background in transportation, saw the need of the people and a way to get his factories humming again with a product that would be relatively easy to produce and allowed under terms of the peace agreement. And as it turned out, it was a product that would boost the morale of a defeated nation. Soon, he was devising a new kind of basic vehicle so innovative that it would forge his mark on the second half of the twentieth century.
Piaggio didn’t invent the motor scooter. It had been tried before, but without much real success. The earlier scooter were mired in bicycle and motorcycle technology, failing to move beyond the tried and true, and turned out to be heavy, clumsy, and slow. Piaggio’s vision of a scooter was absolutely unique, more like a two-wheeled auto-mobile than a bicycle—a clean, comfortable vehicle that a could be driven by anyone with ease.
Piaggio had observed a failed effort by the Italian army to provide small scooters for paratroopers. Called the Aeromoto, it was produced by the Turin company, Societa Volugrafo, and design to be parachuted out of airplanes along with the soldiers, who would use them to buzz their way over to the battle front more quickly. Perhaps a good idea, but the Aeromoto was so poorly designed, underpowered, and unstable that the plan was quickly abandoned, along with the scooters.
(http://vespa-indonesia.com/spartan/vespa-history/)
