Vespa celebrates turning 60

Only 999 are being built, and at this stage it seems unlikely that we'll see it here in Australia. From the official history: The company was founded in Genoa in 1884 by twenty-year-old Rinaldo Piaggio, Piaggio initially undertook luxury ship fitting before going on to produce rail carriages, goods vans, luxury coaches and engines, trams and special truck bodies.

World War I brought a new diversification that was to distinguish Piaggio activities for many decades. The company started producing aeroplanes and seaplanes.

Rinaldo Piaggio's sons Enrico and Armando began the process of re-starting industrial production immediately after world war II. The hardest task went to Enrico, who was responsible for the destroyed Pontedera plant.

The Vespa (which means "wasp" in Italian) was the result of Enrico Piaggio's determination to create a low cost product for the masses. As the war drew to a close, Enrico studied every possible solution to get production in his plants going again - starting from Biella, where a motor scooter was produced, based on a small motorcycle made for parachutists. The prototype, known as the MP 5, was nicknamed "Paperino" (the Italian name for Donald Duck) because of its strange shape, but Enrico Piaggio did not like it, and he asked Corradino D'Ascanio to redesign it.

The aeronautical designer did not like motorcycles. He found them uncomfortable and bulky, with wheels that were difficult to change after a puncture. Worse still, the drive chain made them dirty. However, his aeronautical experience found the answer to every problem.

With the help of his favourite designer Mario D'Este, Corradino D'Ascanio took only a few days to prepare his first sketches of the Vespa, first produced in Pontedera in April 1946. It got its name from Enrico Piaggio himself who, looking at the MP 6 prototype with its wide central part where the rider sat and the narrow "waist", exclaimed, "It looks like a wasp!" And so the Vespa was born.