Vespa Piaggio

Родной город - PONTODERA PIZA ITALY. Из открытых источников получены следующие сведения: информация о среднем образовании, родственниках.

What a lovely name the Vespa has! No one really knows how it came to be named. It is said that during the experimental stage the prototype of what would become the most famous scooter in the world was called Paperino, Italian for Donald Duck. But company lore would have it that when Enrico Piaggio saw the definitive model which Corradino D'Ascanio showed him after having modified it to the entrepreneur's specifications, he exclaimed: "It looks like a wasp!" And wasp - Vespa - it became. Never was a product's name more appropriate. The wasp is in fact a likeable enough insect - individualistic, independent and Nature-loving, even if it can be dangerous and has no real use, not being capable of producing honey. It moves quickly, without stopping, more or less everywhere, interpreting the etymology of the word "scooter", which comes from the verb scoot, meaning "to move swiftly; to go suddenly and speedily". This nomenclature was, among other things, extremely lucky. It was a common noun which became a proper noun, the name of a vehicle, but then returned to being a common noun - in fact one says "the Vespa", but also "a Vespa", sometimes used generically to describe vehicles not produced by Piaggio. I believe that in product history a similar process took place with aspirin. Like any lucky name, the Vespa has given birth to a "family". Another three Piaggio vehicles are called respectively Ape (bee), Moscone (bluebottle) and Grillo (cricket) - all insect names, to follow up on the idea of a small engine with a buzz that flies anywhere and everywhere. But these vehicles also had a decreasing order of success. The Ape, the worker vehicle, did well, though its name had to be changed in English-speaking countries where it was re-baptised Vespacar or, in South Africa, Bromponie. The Moscone, "the seaside Vespa", was moderately successful, while history largely ignores the Grillo. But then the destiny of a masterpiece is to remain unique notwithstanding copies. The strength of the name transferred itself to all the communication of our scooter. The1950s slogan "Vespizzatevi!" (Vespa yourselves!), a linguistic innovation (somewhat like "Vote socialist" or "Walk Pirelli") in that it creates a verb from a proper noun, is still part of the common memory. But the famous "Chi Vespa mangia le mele" (roughly "those who Vespa eat the apple") of the late 1960s is also an example of transformation of the Italian language. In this case the change creates a surprising ambiguity between a hypothetical "to vespa" and the ellipsis of the verb "have" ("those who (have) Vespa…. "). In the Seventies the Vespa goes as far as renaming its rivals the "sardomobili" or "commuter sardines", a bold coinage that put sardines and cars together to indicate (in one word in the original Italian) the terrible degeneration of urban traffic. The Vespa undeniably forms part of Italian history. It was born in 1946 and immediately proved itself the best possible strategy for reconstruction. Enrico Piaggio owned a company that had been destroyed by the war and that was totally unequipped for peacetime. During the war it had produced helicopters, aircraft, industrial vehicles for military use and even arms. Earlier it had produced trains, rail wagons and ships. Its prospects in a country with a non-existent economy were slim. The Vespa was hence a real find. It was a vehicle for town travel or even for small trips. It was the cheap individual solution to a mobility problem that couldn't be solved through the usual mass transport. It was a miniature of the motorised possession represented elsewhere by the commercial vehicle. All in all, it was what we might call "Italy's Ford." Hence it quickly became a myth: a worker's myth, but also one of purchase, of fam

RIDE SMB ON MY BACK