The Siluro: when the Lambretta turned into a record-breaking machine

The Lambretta Siluro (torpedo), an enigmatic red metal capsule a couple of meters long, which could contain everything from a bicycle to a spaceship, contains the history of postwar Italy. And that Italy, it is known, is a running Italy. Racing for reconstruction, racing for reorganization, and racing for innovation. As soon as the war ended, Piaggio set about transforming aircraft designs into monocoque scooters, and in 1946 the Vespa was born. Innocenti, on the other hand, who knew a thing or two about pipes – the Innocenti pipes of all contemporary scaffoldings are his patent – focused as well on aeronautical know-how, but he also observed American military scooters, in a newly liberated Rome. He then recovered the Lambrate factories, east of Milan, and launched a design icon with a rigid, exposed tubular frame: it was 1947, and there was the Lambretta.

People had to move, smartly and economically. Lambretta and Vespa represent the real race for the massification of mobility in Italy, perhaps more than the 500. But this race also relies heavily on the symbolic, on feats and records. And Innocenti launched into the experiment, starting precisely with the Lambretta: again under the guidance of its designer, engineer Pierluigi Torre, a fairing that would generate the name Siluro was added to the bare, brutalist, chassis of this motoleggera, and a volumetric compressor – what was needed to have power already at low RPM – was added to its 125 cc engine.

All of Europe in those years was redefining itself, exploring new identities for its places, and a long freeway straight in Germany, between Munich and Ingolstadt, was singled out for the feat: ridden by Romolo Ferri – with a certain disregard for danger and comfort, since the fairing might contain a bike or a spaceship, but it did not contain the rider's head – the Siluro set the speed record by touching 250 kilometers per hour. The first time a motorcycle in that category exceeded 200 kph, and an unbeaten record to date, because no such experiments have been repeated.

Today, along with the first two Lambrettas produced, the A and B, the Siluro is back in the hands of Innocenti – represented by the Ferdinando and Luigi Innocenti Foundation – after a number of ownership changes that included the Modenese collector Panini. Now an exhibition at the ADI Design Museum in Milan celebrates this return. Whether cementing urban subcultures such as the Mod '60s – which made the Lambretta a symbol – or bringing the shape of a torpedo from the context of war to the context of peace, design here is shown as an expression of a society, even from before it was called design.

Opening image: Courtesy Lambretta Club Milano