Not vintage at 80: why the Vespa is still a living symbol of italian design

The Vespa turns eighty. Eighty years of roads, movement, cinema, desire, bodies in close proximity, cities crossed at an angle. Eighty years of an object that has never been merely a means of transport, but a true cultural machine — capable of holding together industry and lifestyle, engineering and imagination, landscape and intimacy. Few other icons of Italian design can claim such symbolic longevity. Even fewer have passed through history without slipping into nostalgia. The Vespa was born in 1946, in an Italy that was exhausted, hungry, and physically devastated. It did not emerge as a dream of speed or performance — those were the muscular promises of prewar motorcycles — but as an intelligent, gentle, almost domestic response to an urgent need: to move without strain. Reduce effort. Simplify driving. Protect the body. Care, even before boldness, was built into the project.

It was designed by Corradino D’Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer and helicopter designer who — not an irrelevant detail — did not like motorcycles. He found them uncomfortable, unstable, and complicated. It was perhaps precisely this emotional distance that made his approach radical. D’Ascanio did not improve the motorcycle; he moved beyond it. He applied to a small two-wheeled vehicle a principle borrowed from aeronautics: the monocoque structure — self-supporting, lightweight, and strong — which concealed the engine, protected the mechanics, and freed the form.

The result was a surprising object. The engine was invisible. The wheels were small, almost shy, partly hidden. The front fender held up the headlight like a curious eye, while the rear one skimmed the asphalt. You could get on without swinging a leg over tubes or dirtying your trousers. You rode seated, comfortably, as if in a moving armchair. All the controls were on the handlebars. The Vespa did not demand skills or intimidate; it welcomed.

Even its name came from an affectionate, sideways glance. It was Enrico Piaggio who first said it, observing that narrow waist and wide body: “It looks like a wasp.” And it does. The Vespa does not imitate an insect for aesthetics, but for behavior: light, industrious, tireless. It buzzes. It crosses through space. It does not attack, but it gets everywhere.

At first it was maroon, then metallic gray — an industrial, sober, modern color. Italians looked at it in wonder. It resembled nothing they had seen before. Precisely for this reason, it immediately became something else: a symbol, a promise, a lifestyle. Young people adopted it as a generational badge, and cinema turned it into an icon — first in postwar Italian films, then definitively in Roman Holiday by William Wyler. Gregory Peck speeding through Rome with Audrey Hepburn holding on behind him became one of the foundational images of twentieth-century visual culture. It did not just portray a city or a love story, but a way of being in the world.

On a Vespa, after all, you almost always ride two-up. Of course there are exceptions — Nanni Moretti crossing Rome alone in Caro Diario — but those are auteur deviations. The Vespa was born for couples. Its ergonomics dictate a grammar of the body: the rider sits astride, perpendicular to the shield; the passenger behind — historically a woman — keeps her legs together to one side, torso slightly inclined forward, arms around the rider’s waist. The Vespa brings people closer. It demands contact. It turns mobility into a matter of physical proximity. In an Italy still shaped by rigid moral codes and a guarded, prohibitive education of the body, this small scooter became, despite itself, an ambiguous object — almost sinful. A perfect alibi to break distances, to touch without declaring it, to combine speed with intimacy. Mechanical paradoxes, design marvels.

Meanwhile, production grew dramatically. From a few dozen units in 1946, output rose in the early 1950s to over 500 Vespas a day. In 1956 the millionth model was celebrated. The Vespa was not an elitist fetish; it was a popular, accessible, widespread product. And precisely for that reason, it became deeply cultural. Piaggio understood this immediately in its communication. “Vespizzatevi!” (“Vespa-fy yourselves!”) urged posters in the 1950s: slim, busy figures cut out against flat backgrounds, explicit invitations to move, to start again, to set the country in motion. In the 1960s the message became subtler: “All their happiness needs is a Vespa.” The object almost disappeared; the name remained, the promise remained. Vespa became synonymous with scooter — but above all with joy, lightness, freedom.

By the late 1960s and 1970s, the target audience shifted. The Vespa 50 arrived, rideable by fourteen-year-olds, without a license or number plate. It became an initiation into individual mobility. The Vespa exploded into color: whites, light blues, greens, yellows, oranges, even shocking pink. It became a companion animal, an adolescent accomplice. Under the art direction of Gilberto Filippetti, communication grew ironic, playful, openly anti-conformist. “Chi Vespa mangia le mele. Chi non Vespa no.” (“Those who Vespa eat apples. Those who don’t, don’t.”) The biblical reference to the fruit of temptation was clear: Vespa riders were free spirits, able to enjoy life’s pleasures.

In 1972, the Vespa openly declared war on “sardine cars”: congested, immobile, unhappy automobiles. “Sardine cars don’t enjoy the sun. Those who Vespa shine.” It was not just an early ecological joke, but a cultural stance. The Vespa did not simply promise to get you there faster — it promised you would breathe better. Eighty years later, the world has radically changed. Cities are congested, ways of traveling have multiplied, mobility has become an environmental, political, and ethical issue. And yet the Vespa is still there. In continuous production. Capable of sidestepping the technical and symbolic obsolescence that affects almost all everyday objects. Not as a relic, but as a living, updated, desirable presence.

In the story of the Vespa converge industrial reconversion, the history of advertising, lifestyle, landscape, cinema, and the body. Its long journey along the roads of Italy and the world is accompanied by a subtle buzzing: the sound of history passing, but not erasing. All it takes is to look at it closely, with affection, to find within it — in filigree — a small fragment of our own lives.

Opening image: Vespa 98, 1946. Courtesy Dueruote