Featured in the July 2019 Issue of Roadracing World:
Right up the street from a Piaggio and Vespa
scooter factory in Pontedera, Italy, is the Piaggio Museum. It originally opened
in 2000 and was expanded in 2018.
Featuring prominently is a replica of Corrandino
D’Ascanio’s office with a portrait of the man himself, who is credited with reinventing Piaggio with a
focus on individualized transportation after World War II. Next to his desk is
one of his inventions, the variable pitch propeller. He didn’t like
motorcycles, and he set himself to designing a vehicle using aircraft features
that could be ridden by skirt-wearing women and priests without getting grease
on their clothes from the drive chain and that enabled simple tire changes.
The result was the ‘Wasp,’ or Vespa in Italian. It
quickly became the iconic vehicle of mid-century Italy. Just 10 years later,
in 1956, Piaggio produced its millionth Vespa. In 1996 the company produced its
15th millionth Vespa …
–The Piaggio Museum, by Sam Fleming, in the July 2019 Issue of Roadracing World
Scooter culture may be gone in
Italy, but Piaggio keeps rolling along. Its road racing history is rich, and
its machines are well-known for infamous reasons–the flaming MotoGP Cube, for
example–or for amazing performance–the World Superbike domination by
the RSV4. Sam Fleming visited the Piaggo Museum in Italy, and the highlights are detailed in the July 2019 issue of Roadracing World!
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