Word: piaggio
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...world got a pungent whiff of how Italy's public life has decayed when the southern city of Naples was buried under block-long piles of trash last December. But here's another image from the south of Italy: two men in a three-wheeled mini Piaggio garbage truck puttering along the narrow cobblestone streets in the small coastal town of Amendolara, picking up neatly placed bags of refuse for recycling. While the Neapolitans were fuming over the corruption and political spinelessness that elevated their trash woes to iconic significance, a door-to-door pickup scheme was successfully encouraging...
WHEN RINALDO PIAGGIO founded his factory in 1884 at the height of the Belle Epoque, world travel was booming, so ocean-liner fittings naturally were a no-brainer. Soon Piaggio was outfitting luxury trains and car engines too. But when World War II began, he shifted his business to passenger airplanes and bombers?a risky move, because the military importance of his factory made it a prime target. Piaggio's outfit was bombed, and the family lost everything. It wasn't until Rinaldo's son Enrico took over after the war that the Vespa was born...
Concerned about Italy's decrepit highways and bad economy, Enrico Piaggio refocused the family company on the future transportation needs of the Italian masses. He built a prototype of a small motorcycle used by parachutists and known as the MP5, or ?Paperino? (Italian for Donald Duck). But Piaggio was not satisfied with the design, so he asked Corradino D'Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer who had designed one of the first modern helicopters, to overhaul it. D'Ascanio hated motorcycles and quickly transformed the MP5 into a revolutionary scooter based on airplane technology. The vehicle had a single steel chassis...
Although manufacturers feared that the Vespa's popularity would be short-lived, within 10 years Piaggio had sold more than 1 million. The sexy little scooter was immortalized in the 1953 movie Roman Holiday as the vehicle of choice of the dolce vita set. And two decades later, it became the symbol of disenfranchised youth in Quadrophenia. Today it's still the low-cost, high-status alternative to cars in big cities and on college campuses. ?By James Scully
...sales of Vespa have grown at double-digit rates since Italian scootermaker Piaggio reintroduced the small bike Stateside in 2000. The company has sold nearly 5,800 so far this year, up 43% from 2002. In November the company added the bigger Granturismo (GT) to court wealthy, first-time buyers. The redesigned GT, priced at $4,899, has a throaty 200-cc engine, sleek design, and storage space for two riders. Piaggio figures it can grab a 25% share of the U.S. market and plans to introduce more models next year to compete with the likes of Yamaha's Vino...