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motor scooter was produced, based on a small motorcycle made for parachutists.
The prototype, known as the MP 5, 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.

1956 Australian Vespa advert |

Illustrations from "Il Borghese"
("The Bourgeois") designed by Leo Longanesi, 1955-57 |

"A Paradise for two" advertising
campaign, 1962 |
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.
On April 23, 1946 Piaggio & C. S.p.A. filed a patent with the
Central Patents Office for inventions, models and brand names at the Ministry of
Industry and Commerce in Florence, for “a motor cycle with a rational complex of
organs and elements with body combined with the mudguards and bonnet covering
all the mechanical parts”. In a short space of time the Vespa was presented to
the public, provoking contrasting reactions. However, Enrico Piaggio did not
hesitate to start mass production of two thousand units of the first Vespa 98
cc. The new vehicle made its society debut at Rome’s elegant Golf Club, in the
presence of U.S. General Stone who represented the Allied military government.
Italians saw the Vespa for the first time in the pages of Motor (March 24, 1946)
and on the black and white cover of La Moto on April 15, 1946.
From scepticism to “miracle”
Manufacturers and market experts were divided: on one side the
people who saw the Vespa as the realisation of a brilliant idea, and on the
other the sceptics, who were soon to change their minds. In the last months of
1947 production exploded and the following year the Vespa 125 appeared, a larger
model that was soon firmly established as the successor to the first Vespa 98.
The Vespa “miracle” had become reality, and output grew
constantly; in 1946, Piaggio put 2,484 scooters on the market. These became
10,535 the following year, and by 1948 production had reached 19,822. When in
1950 the first German licensee also started production, output topped 60,000
vehicles, and just three years later 171,200 vehicles left the plants
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