"A completely Italian product, such as we have not seen since the Roman chariot"

Florence, Tuscany. April 23rd, 1946.

Piaggio & Co. S.p.A. filed a patent with the Central Patents Office for inventions, models and brand names at the Italian Ministry of Industry and Commerce, for "a motorcycle with a rational complex of organs and elements with body combined with the mudguards and bonnet covering all the mechanical parts".

The scooter was the result of a visionary co-operation between Enrico Piaggio and the aeronautical engineer and inventor Corradino D'Ascanio (1891-1981).

It got its name from Enrico Piaggio himself who, looking at the first prototype with its wide central part where the rider sat and the narrow "waist", exclaimed, "It looks like a wasp!"

And so the Vespa (Wasp) was born.