Happy 60th birthday, Vespa!

2006 maks the 6oth anniversary of the Vespa. It made its first public appearance in Italy back in April 1946. I got mine in April 2006 — talk about getting bitten by the bug wasp sixty years too late. Part of the brand’s charm is knowing the history behind it.

I share with you this article. Consider it your Vespa 101. =)

Read on!

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J0HNRANA

john[dot]rana[at]gmail[dot]com

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Cool at any age: the Vespa hits 60!
by: Richard Owen

“Italy is celebrating the creation of a two-wheel style icon that has won hearts worldwide”

Audrey Hepburn and Jennifer Lopez were pleased to pose on one. It has inspired pop songs and films, and Italians are eager to hail its sleek design as the undisputed symbol of national pride.

Before – Audrey

Now – JLo!

The Vespa turns 60 this year and has been feted with an exhibition celebrating the two-wheeled embodiment of la dolce vita.“The key to the Vespa is that it has a soul,” said Roberto Leardi, head of the Italian Vespa Club. “It is not just a piece of machinery.”

The scooter features as an “icon of Italian design” in Vrooooom, an exhibition that opened last April at Riccione.

The enduring national love affair with the Vespa is partly because of its simple but aesthetically pleasing design, including the voluptuously rounded and flared tail that inspired its name (Vespa is Italian for wasp).

It inspires fierce affection in Italians old enough to remember the heady days of la dolce vita, when, after war and fascism, the Vespa gave young Italian couples the freedom to head for the seaside or the country at an affordable price.

The Vespa was created in April 1946 by Enrico Piaggio, an aircraft manufacturer looking for new postwar markets, and Corradino D’Ascanio, the aeronautical engineer and helicopter designer.

Its elevation to the status of national icon came in 1953, with William Wyler’s film Roman Holiday, in which Gregory Peck takes Audrey Hepburn for a ride around Rome on a Vespa. Other film stars who subsequently posed on one include Ursula Andress, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jennifer Lopez.

By the 1950s, Vespas were being manufactured under licence in 180 countries, including Britain, where they became an essential element of Mod culture.

Part of the Vespa’s success was that women felt comfortable on one. As La Repubblica noted, it was “a tool of emancipation — and seduction”. Even at this time of deep political division and dire economic predictions, Italians can unite around the nostalgia it inspires.

Since 1946, some 17 million have been sold, and 40 per cent are still made at the Piaggio plant at Pontedera in northern Italy. Although the Vespa has been through 140 models, its design remains much the same.

For young Italians the Vespa still symbolises independence: the group Lunapop celebrate the joys of escaping on a Vespa in a recent song entitled Fuori Citta (Out of the City). Some of Italy’s leading writers, including Umberto Eco, have contributed nostalgic essays to a book entitled The Cult of the Vespa.

“I will never be parted from my Vespa,” said Mauro De Rossi, a butcher, as he polished his 25-year-old PX 200 model. “My courting days are over, but there is nothing like a Vespa in Rome traffic or for getting out of town.”

Does he let his daughter borrow it? “You must be joking. She has one of her own.”