Vespa History

Rinaldo Piaggio founded the company, Piaggio, in 1884 and in 1915 started building airplanes. He died in 1938 and left the company to his two sons. They continued building aircrafts during the Second World War. Because of the Allied Peace Treaty, after the war, they were banned from building aircrafts. At this point EnricoPiaggio took control of the company and needed to look for a new product that was relatively easy to produce and was allowed to be build under the restrictive peace treaty. Italy, after the war, had some transportation problems, as cars were expensive and gasoline was limited. With his background in transportation, he thought up the idea of a new kind of scooter that would be inexpensive, economical, lightweight, and able to be ridden by women as well as men.

In 1945 the Vespa was introduced, and in 1946 the first 2,181 scooters were sold, and mass production started. When Piaggio’s head designer brought the first prototype to him and started it, Piaggio right away commented "Sembra una vespa", or "it seems like a wasp". From then on, the name Vespa stuck.

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