The Vespa motor scooter (original name Paperino, Italian for Donald Duck) got its start with the shutdown of the country’s airplane industry after WW II. Something had to be done with all those spare parts, so the ever-inventive Italians created a cheap, easy-to-operate scooter that sold 50 in 1946 and 20,000 by 1950. A big boost for the brand came with the 1952 film Roman Holiday, when Gregory Peck took Audrey Hepburn for a spin, a little jaunt that sold 100,000 of the things worldwide. By the 1960s, the Vespa, meant to be a simple utility vehicle, came to symbolize freedom and imagination and had sales of four million by 1970 and ten million by the late 1980s. Italy’s still the scooter’s largest market, but there are two glamorous Vespa riders in Saratoga Springs and I know them both. Here are their stories.
© 2024 John Oliver
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