Vespa, eighty years and counting
Since Piaggio filed its patent on 23 April 1946, the Vespa has known no crisis: witness the almost 20 million examples sold worldwide, two of which were produced in the last decade. We retrace its history up to the model created to celebrate the anniversary, the Vespa 80th
The Vespa is 80 years old on its (small) wheels, but it doesn't show it at all: the Vespa continues its successful career all over the world. Very few objects have been able to conquer the collective imagination the way she has: ever since Piaggio & C. Spa of Pontedera, in the province of Pisa, filed a patent on 23 April 1946, signed by aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio for a 'motorbike with a rational complex of organs and elements with a combined frame with mudguards and bonnet covering the entire mechanical part', Vespa has literally conquered the world.
And to think that when Enrico Piaggio asked D'Ascanio, an engineer hired in 1932 to design planes and helicopters, to design a motorbike, the answer was no: 'No, I don't want to. I don't even know how to ride it, a motorbike". Enrico Piaggio's request was for a practical vehicle that could be easily ridden by a "man, a woman and a priest in a skirt".
Today, Vespa is a global brand, produced in three production sites: Pontedera, a factory where it has been in continuous operation since 1946 and whose production is destined for Europe and the western markets, including the Americas; Vinh Phuc, in Vietnam, which serves the local market and the countries of the Far East; and Baramati, which has been serving the Indian market since 2012.
The beginning in the reconstruction years
Vespa was born out of the need for individual mobility on the part of a population coming out of a five-year war and the need of Rinaldo Piaggio's sons, Enrico and Armando, to restart industrial production and rebuild the large plant in Pontedera, reconverting production. Having discarded the first prototype of a "motorscooter" modelled on the small motorbikes for paratroopers (initials MP5, code name "Donald Duck"), Enrico commissioned Corradino D'Ascanio who, however, did not like motorbikes, which he felt were too uncomfortable and cumbersome. D'Ascanio drew on his aeronautical experience to solve a motorbike's 'defects': to eliminate the chain, he imagined a vehicle with a load-bearing, direct-drive body; to make riding easier, he placed the gearstick on the handlebars; to facilitate changing the wheels, he devised not a fork but a support arm similar to aircraft bogies. And, lastly, he devised a bodywork capable of protecting the driver, preventing him from getting dirty or dishevelled in his clothing. The Vespa was born: the name was given to it by Enrico Piaggio himself who, in front of the MP6 prototype, with its very wide central part to accommodate the driver and narrow 'waist', exclaimed: "It looks like a wasp!".
