A Jam of Wasps
AMODEST Italian engineer, whose name—D'Ascanio_ means nothing to the motor-scooterist in the Italian street, has caused a social revolution by creating the post-war motor-scooter. D'Ascanio didn't actually invent it, for there was a Heath Robinson-type version in hazardous circulation in 1924 in Milan. But as the chief engineer of the Piaggo factory he is responsible for the efficient Vespa—the Wasp—which is creating new traffic problems for Italy, and making all the difference to the lives of over two million Italians.
The original Wasp, which had exactly the same look as the one in circulation today, but 25cc. less power, was a child of compromise. The romantics prefer the theory that its birth was caused by the Genoese car and aviation magnate, Piaggo, who, discovering that he had finished the war with a surplus of small back wheels of aeroplanes had devised this use for them. But the motor-scooter was the resolution of quite another problem which Piaggo shared with his fellow motor and aviation industrialists—the rebuilding of a new industry with a critical shortage of steel. Just after the war the public had no regular means of transport. If there were cars, there was too little petrol with which to run them. The skeleton bus services were mostly operated by ingenious privately enterpris- ing men who assembled old engines and wooden boxes into ramshackle camionetti. Rolling stock was either sucked into Germany or being used by the occupying Allies. But in the Spring of 1946 with the Italian sleight-of-mind the motor-scooter was conjured out of the ruins of the Piaggo factory at Pontedera in Tuscany. It was cheap, it used very little petrol, it was an independent means of getting about—at least until regular public transport operated again.
The, motor-scooter's first patrons were the Pezzi Grossi—tho Big Pieces—the hierarchy of Italian business life. Building contractors, factory owners, lawyers, and big marketeers phut- phutted about on these toy-like vehicles wearing their city suits, their importantly bulging briefcases between their ankles, their hats blowing up in front like Bud Flanagan's boater, looking as absurdly upright as High Court Judges whom some curious necessity had forced into dodgem cars. Before the summer of 1946 had boiled away there were 2,500 Wasps buzzing about. As motor-cars drove slowly on to the market the age of the motor-scooter was expected to phutter out. But new classes of riders were now in the saddle. Before the war it was rare * Jenny Nicholson is an English journalist living in Italy, mainly in Rome and Portofino. She writes regularly from Italy for the "Spectator." to see a woman driving a motor-car in Italy. It still is. Yet they swarm on motor-scooters. Few Italian men allow their women to drive a car. But no licence is needed to ride a motor-scooter and, since it costs only one-seventh of the price of the smallest car on the market, it is a thin enough expense to wedge into the family budget. Italy is a strong patriarchy which forces women to be dependent; tends to make them approach life cautiously, indirectly. For the first time many ordinary upper- and middle-class women are in direct control of something, experiencing independence as they dash along on their motor-scooters. Nowadays young men will even condescend to ride behind them on the pillion. The Italian film Bellezze sul Mow-scooter was socially significant. It was joking apart as it reeled off the unimportant adventures of some pretty girls who set off one fine day on their motor-scooters- respectable girls, mind you, adventuring far from home along the road to emancipation.
Only one motor-scooter in every two hundred is bought by a woman but enough to influence the big Italian dressmakers to show Motor-Scooter fashions. Except as a concession to the imported foreign habit at the smarter seaside resorts, no Italian woman wears trousers. And since the motor-scooter has no cross-bar it has not introduced them; it even seems to emphasise the femininity of the moto-scooteriste. Their skirts are full enough to look nice in the saddle, but not too full to billow or get caught in the wheels. The American heel-less pump, bags with big bone handles to hang on the handle-bars, and the high-necked sweater came in. Mirsa and Emilio Pucci —two of Italy's best Boutique designers—devised the woollen head-kerchief, which would not blow off at high speed to keep the ears warm, and jerseys to match.
The motor-scooter has revolutionised village life. Out of every hundred, seven are sold to agricultural labourers. Except under some new agrarian reform schemes, Italian farmers seldom live on their land but congregate in villages and often trudge for hours to their distant hectares. When you hear that new country Sound which is not the whooping of an ass, nor the whirring of the cicadas—when you see a motor-scooter lying in the speckled shade of an olive tree you can translate it into more farming hours, more energy for work and more leisure for a game of bowls under the vine. In many villages the inhabitants specialise for some local reason in one trade. If, for instance, one village tans hides its neighbouring village might devote itself to shoe-making. There has always been the awkward and slow transport of skins to shoemakers and shoes to the nearest market town. Now they buy an Ape—a Bee—a drone motor-scooter with a little cart on the back. Twenty-two out of every hundred motor-scooters are bought by small traders. The village priest can now say Mass every Sunday at several of the chapels in his dispersed parish. He can make good speed to a death bed, spend longer with the sick. One out of every hundred motor-scooters is bought by a priest. The doctor can serve several villages. Sixteen out of every hundred motor- scooters are bought by doctors. Students who have worked their way to the nearest University can now commute between the city and their home villages. Before the advent of the motor-scooter they moved into the city while they were studying and returned to their home village after they had qualified, or perhaps severed constant relations with it for ever. Now their urban and country lives need not be separate and there can be a real connection between the thumbed Homer and the homeric landscape. Two motor-scooters out of every hundred are bought by students, one by a school-master. The village gossip-centre is moving gradually from the osteria to the officina where motor-scooters are repaired. Here students, farm labourers, the daughter of the local land baron, the priest and the leading Communist meet on common, oily ground. The Communist Party is the biggest bulk buyer of motor-scooters, which they supply to their activists. In Italy there is one car or lorry to every sixty-five people. After fewer than seven years since engineer D'Ascanlo's capo lavoro, there is one motor-scooter to every thirty-one people. Five different types of motor-scooters compete in Italy Wray, which is bringing prices down. And since they are now not only getting cheaper but can be bought on the hire-purchase system with as long as two years to pay, every day more Italians can afford them and the factories will be turning out more than the present 400,000 a year. They have already created a serious traffic problem. There is an accident every six minutes on the Italian roads and a high proportion involve motor-scooters. Although they officially take up two-thirds as much room as a car, the ownership of anything that goes faster than walking pace is such an intoxicating experience to so many of the new riding public that they swerve regally from side to side feeling the highways are all theirs. Also, there is no official measurement or allowance for the project- ing ankles of the side-saddle pillion riders. Police have tried to enforce the law that not more than two people may ride on a motor-scooter, but who has the heart to turn back a whole family on their way for a day at the sea ?—father driving, mother behind, one child wedged between them, another child with a dog in its arms between father's knees and the baby in mother's arms.
Motor-scooters have forced on Italy a tremendous new road- building programme which has just been approved by Rome. In the next twelve years over 1,000 miles of autostrada will be carved through the countryside and 4,250 miles of new roads with lateral scooter tracks, at the cost of £520 million.
One of the troubles with motor-scooters is the sporting young man who, unable to afford a real motor-bicycle, takes the silencer off his scooter and roars along too loud and too fast taking his corners ear-to-the-ground in the manner of Geoff. Duke. The buzz of properly silenced motor-scooters turns out to be a noise which even Italians find intolerable. Narrow streets megaphone the sound and in the big cities many streets have been forbidden them. The police will issue an anti-noise law as soon as they have perfected the phonometre—an instrument for measuring sound which every policeman will have in his pocket. But the general nuisance value of motor-scooters and the grave burden on the country's finances they have caused is all brightly eclipsed by the enormous amount of employment they have given in the factories and repair shops, and by their social value. To the lives of millions of Italians they have brought a luxury which we regard as a necessity—privacy. On their motor-scooters they can escape from the one overcrowded room, from the suffocating street in which so many Italians conduct so much of their lives, from the too-familiar café. They have introduced picnics and country excursions to the city slicker; and put city culture within interesting reach of the bumpkin. What is more, they have taken millions of lovers out of cinemas, dark doorways and city parks and carried them to more romantic places.
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