The Icon VESPA was brought into existence by the Piaggio, highly remarkable innovators in the field of Transportation for nearly 120 years.

Piaggio was founded in Genoa, Italy in 1884 by twenty-year-old Rinaldo Piaggio. Rinaldo's business began with luxury ship fitting. The company gained momentum and manufactured rail carriages, luxury coaches, truck bodies, engines, and trains by the end of the century.

World War I poised a serious hype in the Piaggio business, they were entrusted in builing masses of war planes and sea planes for the axis war effort. A small plant in Pontedera, Tuscany became its new center for Aeronautical production. This small plant has gained much military importance at the time of World War II and was continuously bombed by the Alied forces and the whole plant was eventually destroyed.

Under the new pact with the Allied Forces, Piaggio was not permitted to produce aircrafts of military importance and by this time the Piaggio empire was taken up by Enrico Piaggio from his father Rinaldo.

The disastrous state of the country's economy and the roads lit the imagination of Enrico and decided to focus his attention on personal mobility that would be showcased to the masses of people in Italy. Piaggio's intention was not to build a scooter as there were many models which were not successful due to their clumsy design, operatability and they were really slow. Enrico wished to enhance the design and the first prototype was designed by his design engineers and the result was nick named "Paparino" (Donald Duck). This design did not please Enrico, but he saw the potential of the these kind of vehicles and he entrusted this tiring design to his chief design engineer Corradino D'Ascanio to redesign the prototype keeping its original proportions.

The eventual design from Corradino D'Ascanio marked the birth of the phrase "Sembra Una Vespa" (Looks like an Wasp) and the Icon VESPA, which provided a new generation of transportation to the whole world.

In 1946 the first series of Vespa was introduced into the market and Vespa was hailed as one of the best innovation in Italy's post war era. Browse through our exclusive gallery of Vespa Scooters

"The Icon Vespa did not limit itself with the scooters and in the year 1951 they emereged in manufacturing mini cars and the model Vespa 400 was a success until the first year of production and was even exported to Germany. Due to its optimum speed the model could not compete with the ravishing high speed mini cars manufactured and was soon out of the market.