Complete today 135 years a historical brand of the Made in Italy industry, father of the moped par excellence, the Vespa. It was October 10, 1884 when Rinaldo Piaggio, just twenty years old, founded in Sestri Levante the company that still bears his name today. At the time, however, the core business was very different from what everyone knows: naval furnishings.
From the beginning of the century, Piaggio entered the engineering sector, producing, for example, railway carriages. A new change came in 1917, in the midst of the World War, when Rinaldo converted the company to aeronautical and military production (anti-submarine motorboats, airplanes, seaplanes).
Between the two wars the company also began to produce airplanes and in 1926 Rinaldo founded the Società Anonima Navigazione Aerea, the first Italian company for the air transport of passengers.
During the Fascism Piaggio built trucks, buses, cableways, trailers, funiculars, aluminum windows and doors. In 1924 it was purchased, a Pontedera, the factory of CMN, National Mechanical Constructions.
Only in 1945, after the war, the first prototypes of the Vespa. The name was coined by Enrico Piaggio (son of Rinaldo, who died in 1938), due to the very wide central part, the narrow "waist" and the hum of the engine.
It was a revolution. The new scooter was presented on March 29th 1946, but only since 1948, with the release of the 125cc model, public success arrived. In the 1956 the millionth specimen was produced (production also began in India in the 60s): today we are over 16 million.
After Enrico Piaggio's death in 1965, the company was bought by the Agnelli, which in turn sold the property in 1999 to the financial group Morgan Grenfell Private Equity. Four years later Piaggio passed into the hands of the industrial holding Immsi di Roberto Colanino, listed on the Milan Stock Exchange.
In 2006 came the acquisition of Aprilia, to which other historic brands such as Moto Guzzi belonged. In 2006 the company Piaggio & Co. is listed on the Stock Exchange.
