What is a “Vespa”?
You’ll hear people using the word “Vespa” as a generic word to refer to scooters. Vespa is a brand name like Chevrolet or Toyota. Americans actually invented the scooter – one of the earliest being Cushman. During World War II Americans dropped Cushman scooters into Italy for the use of the soldiers there. The Italians were quite taken with the little, fuel efficient things and Mr Piaggio used this model to invent the Vespa (from Italian for wasp). Another classic Italian brand was Lambretta. Vespa and Lambretta competed strenuously for years. Vespas have been made and improved ever since. During the 60’s a lot of us rode Vespas and Lambrettas (see the pic under About Us), an all steel scooter which had a 2-stroke engine and manual shift. Then the EPA banned smokey 2-stroke engines so Vespas were unobtainable in the US for about 20 years. Lambretta gave up and stopped making scooters. Now Vespas are back – beautiful, sexy, with modern engines and automatic transmissions. Please visit o
