Celebrations in Rome this very day on the 80th anniversary of the introduction of Piaggio's Vespa scooter. Post-war the roads in Italy were not the best, and airplane manufacturers like Piaggio were largely forbidden from being so. And so they turned instead to manufacturing these, in a place where people were poorer than they had been but as fashion-conscious as ever... and reluctant to see oil or grease anywhere near trouser or skirt.
We'd a scrap 350cc Zundapp from Germany as kids that we tried and failed to get running, but aside from that in the UK in the way you were either Catholic or else Protestant you only ever rode motorbikes or scooters like the Vespa. The division was in fact cemented in the UK by gang-membership of either Mods (scooters) or Rockers (motorbikes), and reinforced by them regularly convening at seaside towns like Brighton in order to hospitalise each other. Rockers did this with chains, unfair in view of the fact scooter-riders didn't need one.
Ed. Goes some way to explaining why Honda's 50cc step-through became the most-produced motorised two-wheeler ever, accepted by each side as a work in progress.
