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.
In 1945, two of piaggio’s design engineers, Vittorio Casini and
Renzo Spolti, produced a scooter based on a small motorcycle being
built at his Biella plant. They had taken an earlier scooter design,
the peculiar SIMAT designed by Vittorio Belmondo in the late 1930s, and
built on the basic idea. What they produced was an ungainly
contraption, nicknamed Paparino, the Italian derivative of Donald Duck,
which mockingly reflected its odd, ducklike shape. Piaggio himself
described it as “a horrible-looking thing,” and it was soundly
ridiculed by the press and public.
But from those humble efforts, Piaggio saw the spark of genius.
Paparino had fired his emplotees back to work and Italy back on wheels.
Piaggio wanted to build a new kind of scooter that would be
inexpensive, economical, light-weigh and maneuverable, and able to be
ridden comfortably by women as well as men. He wanted the rider of his
scooter to be shielded from dirt, pudled, and the bike’s mechanical
parts, the same as a person driving a car. And he wanted it to be the
soul of simplicity, easy to build, easy to understand, and easy to
repair.
To help realize his vision, Piaggio in 1945 enlisted the help of his
head designer, engineer Corradino D’Ascanio, the inventor of the
helicopter, who took his vast knowledge of automobile and aircraft
design and narrowed its complexities down to the most basic of terms.
D’Ascanio disliked traditional motorcycles and felt that they had
more defects than attributes—uncomfortable seating position, exposure
to puddles and road debris, dangerous drive chain, and difficulty in
repairing flat tires, among other faults. So he set out to create
something that would take Paparino a giant step further along, and well
away from motorcycle technology. A major part of D’Ascanio’s
innovative work came from his understanding of stressed-skin body-work,
used extensively in aircraft, in which the body serves double duty as
an outside frame, eliminating any sort of separate supporting structure.
Today, we know this as monocoque, or unibody, design, with essentially
every passenger vehicle based on the concept. But in 1945, it was
radical thinking.
In just three months, D’Ascanio delivered his assignment. When the
engineer returned with his take on scooter design, Piaggio was impressed
with the result. D’Ascanio’s scooter was smooth and aerodynamic, with
an overall shape that looked strikingly modern. As Piaggio looked at
the scooter’s narrow waist and wide, rounded rear aspect, and heard the
buzzing of the little 98-cc engine, he remarked, “Semba una vespa,”
which in Italian meant, “It seems like a wasp.” Of course, “Vespa” is
the name that stuck, and remains still, all around the globe.
It became the prototype Vespa motor scooter. It was constructed without
a supporting frame, instead using a sheet-metal fuselage. It has a
broad shield to deflect splashes and debris from the rider, who sat
upright gripping wide handlebars. The front fork was substituted with a
one-sided wheel assembly and suspension much like the tail-dragger
wheel of an airplane. A drive chain or drive shaft was unnecessary
because the unitized engine and drive train were hidden within the
bodywork of the scooter, shielding the rider from grease, dirt, and
oil. D’Ascanio had taken elements of motorcycles, bicycles,
automobiles, and aircraft to create something new altogether.
One obvious advantage over the motorcycle was the ease of repairing a
flat tire. When motorcycle riders suffer a flat, they are stuck with
the daunting job of dismantling the tire and tube from the wheel—which
is difficult to remove from the bike—patching the tube and putting it
all back together. It’s a dirty job that requires tools and skill. But
with the Vespa design, both the front and rear wheels are identical,
mounted on one-sided stub axles that allow them to be removed easily
and replaced with a spare, which is carried on the back of the scooter
or, in later years, behind the legshield or under the left cowl.
The
prototype was introduced to the world in 1946 in the posh surroundings
of the Rome Golf Club before a gathering of Italian leaders and
aristocracy. Quickly, it was hailed as Italy’s first post-war innovation
and recognize for its practically and usefulness. And for the first
time in many years of militaristic oppression, the scooter represented
something that was fun and uplifting, just as it is today.
The first run of Vespa scooter was examined and tested by skeptical
journalists, who were soon won over by the scooter’s surprising
attributes, despite their early negative reactions. Most impressive,
the press decided, were the handling, the performance from the
two-cycle engine, the ease of operation, and the fact that anyone
wearing a skirt or a nice pair of dress pants could ride in comfort and
arrive at his or her destination without mussed clothes.
Yes, it was immediately obvious that here was a two-wheeled vehicle
that could be used by woman as practically as men. Besides its light
and easy operation, the motor scooter offered its unique protective
apron and floor, step-through entry, and a seat that allowed the rider
to sit upright as in a chair, rather than having to straddle it like a
motorcycle—a highly unladylike position in 1940s Italy, especially while
wearing a dress.
Bolstered by the favorable reception, Piaggio immediately had 100
scooters made in a preliminary run. A deal was forget with Lancia, a
prestigious make of automobile, to sell the first batch in its
dealerships. The 100 were soon gone, and a production run of 2,500
scooters was undertaken. In all, 2,181 were sold in 1946, 10,535 in
1947, and nearly 20,000 in 1948.
Still, some critics panned the scooters as being unsafe, or noisy,
or just not up to snuff. Motorcyclists and the motorcycle industry were
harsh in their criticism, stating that the Vespa 8-inch wheels were
dangerously unstable, that the scooter was too slow and didn’t handle
well. They said was impractical for anything more than short jaunts
around urban areas.
But many others loved the Vespa scooter and all that it represented.
It was innovative, it was stylish, and it was affordable, all the
things that poor and war-weary Italians were longing for. Piaggio
weathered all complaints, confident that its new motor scooter would
take the world by storm. Which it did.
Italian women were greatly affected by this new mode of
transportation, giving them a taste of freedom and mobility they’d
never had before. The Vespa scooter’s sophisticated, feminine form was
quickly viewed as the stylish and cosmopolitan way for women to travel
and be seen traveling on Roman roads. And for young men, the motor
scooter became a means of both attracting young women and spiriting
them away for a more private rendezvous. As they buzzed about those
drab post-war city streets and country roads, the whimsically modern
shape of the scooter must have seemed like bright spots of joy.
The early scooters, with their rigid rear suspensions,
fender-mounted headlights, exposed engine covers and bicycle-style
handlebars, are today know mainly as “rod models” because of the complex
system of solid control rods that actuated the gear change. While rod
bikes have plenty of appear today because of their novelty, at the
time, the changeover to flexible cable in 1951 was greatly appreciated
by contemporary riders. Still, 65,000 of the last run of rod-model
scooters were sold during 1950.
The earliest models had no provision to cool the engine, despite its
confined location. In 1948, the air-cooled engine was kept from
overheating by cleverly incorporating a fan attached to the flywheel
that forced air over the cylinder’s cooling fins, a design that remains
to this day.
And so began Vespa motorscooter’s rapid rise in popularity that very
quickly encompassed the entire world, eventually being produced in 13
different nations and totaling more than 15 million scooters sold in
more than 50 years of production. Piaggio’s Scooters are still being
made in plants in Italy, Germany, France, Japan, India, and other Asian
nations. The Asian scooters being built today are not very different
from the Vespa models made during the 1970s.
Piaggio’s only serious competition arose in 1947, when the Innocenti
corporation began producing its Lambretta, outwardly similar but
fundamentally different from the Vespa design. Where the Vespa scooter
had a stressed-steel structure, Lambretta used a backbone frame. The
suspension, drivelines, and most other details were also different.
Most significantly, it was the Vespa design that became the archetypal
scooter, identified as such around the world, while Lambretta always
ran a distant second, until its last scooter in 1971.
SMALL CHANGES
Though updated many times over the years, the shape of every Vespa
scooter is basically the same, from its contoured steel apron to its
low, rounded-off rear. The steady progression of change in the details
and mechanical parts endow every Vespa model with its own character,
its own style, and its own personality. Naturally, some models have
become more desirable than others, capturing a certain stylistic era or
performance edge that sets its apart. Some have a stronger personality
than others.
Like the VW Beetle, every Vespa scooter is a classic, its basic
style staying the same but with the mechanical and stylistic details
ever changing. And like the Beetle, it’s easy for many people to see all
the Vespa models as looking the same. But when one starts looking more
closely at the details, the various change made throughout the years,
such as subtle contour changes in body style, taillights and trim,
become easy to identify. Plus models come in various size and engine
displacement, from the small-frame bikes with engine size ranging from
50-cc to 125-cc, to the bigger body with engine going up to the
powerful 200-cc models.
One thing that has stayed the same is the one-cylinder, two-cycle
engine that is the heart of every Vespa scooter. The first models were
powered by a 98-cc two-cycle engine, rated at 3.3 horse-power, mounted
horizontally, and acting directly on the drive wheel via a three-speed
transmission. Although the engine changed over the years, the design
stayed basically the same. Simple to maintain or repair, each two-stroke
engine produces a surprising amount of power and torque for its size,
allowing most of urban traffic. The bigger displacement models are able
to go cross country touring in comfort.
The engine and transmission are durable and reliable. The Piaggio
corporation had so much faith in the durability of Vespa transmissions
that, during the 1960s, it provided all its scooters with a lifetime
transmission warranty. But the two-stroke engine were also the downfall
of the Vespa scooter in the United States, where pollution concerns
created emissions standards that the engine could never pass. Piaggio
temporarily suspended roles of scooters in the U.S. market in 1986,
steering its production to other parts of the world.
VESPA SCOOTERS IN THE UNITED STATES
It may seem surprising today, but Piaggio got its star in the United
States through Sears-Roebuck department stores and catalogs, arriving in
1951. Because Sears was selling the scooters as their own product, the
bikes were named “Allstate” instead of “Vespa”. They were
stripped-down, bare-bones 125-cc models, similar to Italian U-models,
which were green in color like the All states. (Rumor was that Piaggio
had commandeered a tremendous stash of war-surplus green paint, to gain
the range of green shades used on each scooters). Sears sold the
Vespa-Allstates in the catalog alongside cheaper Cushman-All states
scooters. Though U.S. made Cushmans were popular throuh the late 1940s
and early 1950s, they were simple, slow and ungainly, both in
appearance and performance, compared with the elegance and
sophistication of the Vespa scooters.
Sears marketers could certainly tell the difference. The Cushmans
were show in small photos, and were labeled “a fine American motor
scooter,” while the Vespa-Allstates had larger photos and were called:
“Our finest motor scooter, the great All states Cruisaire.” One ad read
alluringly, “ Go ‘Continental’ with this fine Italian-styled
powerhouse.” The price tag: $325.95. When you order your Vespa-Allstate
through a Sears catalog, it arrived at your door in a big wooden box,
and was partially disassembled. Sears stores provided service and parts
for the scooters at its region stores.
In those days, scooters were big in the United States, with
Cushmans, Simplex, Salisbury, Autoped, and others enjoying raging
popularity. The Vespa-Allstates were highly successful, with thousands
sold by Sears through 1969. With their three-speed, clutch-operated
gearboxes and superior handling and driveability, not to mention
European styling, the Vespa-Allstates quickly became the runway
favorites, the “finest” scooter on the road.
All this encouraged Piaggio to enter the U.S. market on the Vespa
brand’s own merit. Around 1995, Vespa dealerships began cropping up in
urban areas. Soon, thousands of scooters labeled “Vespa” were joining
the Allstates.
SCOOTERS AND MORE
Piaggio, meanwhile, had begun manufacturing other products for
industrial use, based on the technology developed for the scooters.
They used the Vespa motors for industrial engines, snowplows, and small
three-wheeled vehicles that were used for a wide variety of purposes
and called the Ape (pronounced ah-pey, which is Italian foe bee). Ape
employed a scooter front end and, from the rear seat back, a platform
that could be fitted with a variety of utility bodies, such as small
dump trucks, delivery vans, and pickups. These were ubiquitous on urban
streets, and became familiar to most American in the background of many
Italian movie scenes.
They also made a Vespa car, but it was a completely different
vehicle from the scooter or Ape, not utilizing a single one of the
scooter parts. Manufactured in France from 1958 through 1961 by a
Piaggio division called ACMA, these little cars competed with Fiats,
giving the Italian giant a run for its money, especially among women
drivers because of its style and magical Piaggio nameplate. But only
about 34,000 Vespa cars were manufactured.
Feeling threatened by the upstart automaker, Fiat warned Piaggio
that it could build its own line of scooters and put Piaggio out of
business. This is why the Vespa 400 was built in France and never
imported to Italy, though it was sold in such nation as Germany,
France, Belgium, and United States. In 1959, with the marriage of a
ruling-family Fiat male to a ruling-family Piaggio female, the
relationship between the industrial giants was cemented. After a few
years of close partnership with Fiat, Piaggio quit building the little
cars altogether.
In the United States, Vespa car sales were slow, even though they
were advertised in such popular publications as Playboy, joining
splashy ads for other such European offerings as MG and Alfa Romeo.
Other than sports cars, small cars were not yet popular in the United
States, where huge Buicks and Chryslers were crowding the highways and
competing in horsepower wars. Little cars were something for clowns to
jump out of at the circus. Soon Volkswagen would change American’s view
of small cars, but that would be too late for the Vespa car.
Piaggio’s real business was scooters, and the colossal growth of the
two-wheeled Vespa models mirrored Italy’s return to economic health,
though with a post-war twist. And it heralded the birth of modern-day
marketing, From day one, Piaggio pumped the advertising, and the
advertising pumped the Vespa brand. The advertising was often as
exciting as the people who were creating the scooters, the marketing as
brilliant as the Vespa design, and soon Vespa motor scooters had a
bright and youthful image around the globe.
In 1956, Piaggio marked an important milestone, the sale of its
one-millionth scooter worldwide, a victory over the early naysayers and
cause for celebration throughout Italy. To honor the rousing success,
the Italian government declared Vespa Day in April of that year, and
the impromptu holiday was celebrated with festivals in 15 different
cities. A horde of 2,000 Vespa scooters roared through Rome, snarling
traffic.
By then, Vespa scooters were being built under license in a number of countries, including France, Germany, and England.
THE BRITISH SCOOTERS
Vespa manufacture in England is a story in itself. The Douglas company
of Bristol built motorcycles for many years in England before
discovering motor scooters. Owner Claude McCormack was inspired while
on vacation in 1948 by the sight of them buzzing around the streets of
Italy, and he envisioned a similar transportation revolution for Great
Britain. As in Italy, Britons had to deal with scarce, expensive
gasoline and a shortage of automobiles after World War II. Like the
Italians, their cars were tiny, so the transition to a small,
two-wheeled “car” like the motor scooter did not seem like such a
stretch.
McCormack forged an agreement with Piaggio to build Vespa models on
British soil, and in early 1951, began producing scooters. The 125-cc
Douglas scooter was nearly identical to the Piaggio scooter, right down
to the same metallic-green paint scheme. But it had an immediately
obvious difference: instead of having the headlight mounted on the
fender, the Douglas scooter had the headlight mounted on the legshield
below the handlebars. This design was in accordance with British law
governing headlight heights, but it created the obvious detriment of
the headlight no longer turning with the direction of the front wheel.
Under
the sheet metal, there were some minor mechanical differences, as the
Douglas company bought most of its outsourced components from British
manufactures instead of Italian ones. Lucas electrical systems, Amal
carburetors instead of the otherwise ubiquitous Dell’Ortos,
British-made seats and tires were among the differences. But
essentially, Douglas was building Vespa scooters.
The Douglas scooters caught on, and soon many thousands of them were
running around England. Douglas followed Piaggio in upgrading the
models through the years. Unlike Piaggio, Douglas changed its model
numbers each year, so that a VS2 built in the 1956 model year became a
VS3 the following year, and so forth. That was Douglas’s designation
for the Vespa 150 GS. After building more than 1125,000 scooters,
Douglas quit making them in 1964, but continued importing them from
Italy for many years thereafter.
During the 1960s, scooter mania exploded in England, where Vespa
motor scooters were embraced by stylish young Mods. Their Carnaby
Street image and intelligent playfulness on carefully customized
scooters clashed with the blue-collar Rockers on British Triumph, BSA,
and Norton motorcycles. Rod Stewart, the Dave Clark Five, and of
course, The Who, were Adherents of the Mod’s musical, artistic, and
cultural style. The trendy Who movie, Quadrophenia, present a look at
the violent encounters between the Mods and the Rockers. Decades later,
The Who’s music remains part of Vespa pop culture, with stylish young
people still encountering resistance, tough now from Americas on big
Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
THE NEW BREED OF SCOOTER
By the 1960s, vespa scooters had been given more horsepower, a rear
suspension, better brakes, better electrics, and more streamlined
shapes. The 150 GS model of 1955 began the classic era, setting the
stylistic current and engine design that would carry Vespa scooters for
more than two decades. A smaller, entry-level model, now called the
small frame, was powered by a 50-cc engine that took advantage of laws
in some European countries that allowed younger drivers to pilot mopeds
with engine displacements of 50-cc or less. In France, redundant
pedals were added to qualify it as a moped. Later, a 90-cc and a 125-cc
version were added to the line of inexpennsive small frame.
Piaggio continued its line of success through the 1970s, developing
motor scooters that were faster, sleeker, and more efficient, while
staying true to the original design and intent. The 200 Rally became
the hot scooter on the street, boasting 12 horsepower, a top speed
exceeding 60 miles per hour and, according to the factory, the ability
to go to long-distance touring without fear of breakdown. The 200 Rally
also was the first Vespa model with oil injection, freeing riders from
having to mix lubricating oil with the gasoline. Oil-injected scooters
were largely a U.S. phenomenon, the Europeans preferring to premix
their own.
The bigger, faster P-series bikes made their appearance in 1978,
with shaper styling that looked more modern at the time, but seen from
today’s vantage, losing the rounded classic look that made the earlier
scooters so appealing. But while Vespa scooters had reached a stage of
development where they were more practical, more comfortable, and more
reliable, they also were coming up hard against U.S. environmental
concerns. The two-cycle engine, long a hallmark of Vespa design, could
not be refined enough to suit clean air regulations.
Faced with the environmental pressure and overwhelming competition
from Japan, Piaggio pulled out of the U.S. marked in 1986. But still a
strong demand drove production of motorscooterd, including Piaggio’s
subsequent model, the Cosa, in Europe and Asia. In India, a Vespa plant
still turns out scooters, affordable and suitable for crowded urban and
rural roads. City street throughout Southeast Asia also are packed
with Vespa scooters. In trendy, affluent Japan, classic Vespa models
have become a fashionable accessory for stylish young people.
And in Italy, the Vespa motor scooter continues its reign as an
urban icon, buzzing through narrow Roman streets, still remembered and
revered as the invention that helped bring Italy back from the ruins of
war and economic collapse, still emblematic of the Continental
lifestyle, and still the same basic design rolled out in 1946.
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