Piaggio History
Piaggio a Go Go!
If you’re a vehicle nut and want to know more about Piaggio, then you’ve come to the right place! Piaggio makes a range of motorcycles, scooters and vans, including Vespa. In all, the Italian manufacturer makes around 600,000 vehicles per year, which ranks it fourth in the world as one of the largest global producers and manufacturers of scooters and motorcycles.
The company was founded over a century ago by Rinaldo Piaggio in 1884 when he started out making locomotives and train carriages for the railway industry in Italy. During World War I, however, the company switched operations to begin manufacturing aircraft to help the war effort. The factory in Pontedera was annihilated by bombing aircraft during an attack by Allied Forces and the company gave second thought to the production of a vehicle that would be viable for the general population. They wanted to make an affordable run-around that would appeal to men and women alike and would be simple to operate. They came up with the Vespa scooter in 1946, which became something of an icon. ‘Vespa’ means ‘wasp’ in Italian and in under a decade after launching over a million Vespa scooters had been made.
On the back of their scooter success, Piaggio set about making other products such as the Vespa 400 vehicle which was a micro-car. The Agnelli family then took control of the company and created two distinct subdivisions that would deal with motorcycles and aeronautical machines. The company fell into some financial difficulties, so they switched their manufacturing to a production assembly line that could be recreated worldwide. Despite nearly 577 million Euros of debt, the company managed to soldier on without firing a single one of their workers. They found investment but still struggled to exceed their motorcycle manufacturing rivals Honda and Yamaha.
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