THE PIAGGIO APE
THE CURIOSITY THAT BECAME A MIGHTY PRESENCE IN URBAN & RURAL ITALY AND IT'S STILL GOING STRONG!
THE CURIOSITY THAT BECAME A MIGHTY PRESENCE IN URBAN & RURAL ITALY AND IT'S STILL GOING STRONG!
Every time we visit our apartment in Citta della Pieve we park our Panda hire car on the gentle slope outside the garage below our flat. Invariably we find ourselves next to a strange little vehicle the likes of which I'd never seen before until we started visiting Italy regularly. It's an odd creature having only three wheels, one at the front and two at the back, and the cab doesn't seem big enough to hold more than one person - perhaps two small Italians at a push; certainly not two blokes of the height and girth of Jon and I. This distinctive type of vehicle I've come to know as an "APE" and this one belongs to the chap who owns and uses the workshop in the garage next to ours. He comes and goes in it regularly and when it "phut phuts" up and down the hill it never fails to bring a smile to my face. Despite my obvious amusement I soon came to appreciate this as a vehicle with great versatility as I've seen it's open truck back filled with various sorts of stuff ranging from old scrap to bits of broken furniture and waste from neighbours' gardens. The best thing of all is its ability to negotiate the narrow little alleys and passageways which are ubiquitous in the "centro historico" of our little town where other four wheeled vehicles would never be able to venture. Once I'd become familiar with this little Ape I started to see them everywhere we went, both in towns and in the country - some built with a van like backs and others in the form of the truck I've already described. During our last visit when I saw our neighbour's Ape yet again I decided to find out a bit more about its origins.
Apes are made by the well known Italian firm of Piaggio and to understand their origin its interesting to consider the start up of the company in 1884. Founded by Rinaldo Piaggio early manufacture concentrated on locomotives and carriages but during World War 1 production shifted to aircraft and this continued in the post-war period. During World War 2 bomber aircraft were made, but by the end of hostilities the Piaggio factory at Pontedera near Pisa had been decimated by enemy aircraft. Enrico Piaggio, son of Rinaldo the founder of the company, decided it was time to take it in a new direction and to concentrate on the design and production of vehicles which would aid Italy's economic reconstruction and would provide cheap, reliable methods of transportation for the masses. Aeronautical designer Carradino D'Ascanio, who'd been involved in the design process leading to the first modern helicopter, turned his talents to the new project which had a strict design brief.
The new vehicle had to be:
1. easy to drive for both men and women, 2. able to carry a passenger, 3. not get the owner's clothes dirty (this is Italy after all!). The result - the design and production of the Italian Vespa two wheeled scooter which went into production in 1946. Within ten years over a million of them had been produced and sold!
The Vespa fulfilled the design brief beautifully and its not surprising it became a runaway success, but it didn't address the problem of the lack of four wheeled vehicles much needed for moving goods around from one place to another. In 1947 D'Ascanio took on the task of designing a petrol driven, cheap to build vehicle which could act as a workhorse and help get the Italian economy going again. This time the result was not a four wheeled vehicle but one with three and the solution was easy - turn the amazing little Vespa scooter into a three wheeled vehicle which could carry goods. Essentially it was a three wheeled vehicle (one at the front and two at the back) with a flat bed mounted over the extended axle but driven in exactly the same way as the scooter! The scooter had been named a VESPA which translates into English as 'wasp' and though when the first model of the new vehicle went into production in 1948 it was called a TRIVESPA - it was soon rebranded an APE which translates into english as a 'bee'. This was a much cleverer name as it connected it to the vespa and espoused the positive work ethic image the company wanted to emphasize. The first Ape cost 170,000 lire and it was available in 50cc, 125cc and 150cc engine variations. With its easy to drive handle bar mechanism, low fuel consumption, versatility and a reasonable cost the new Ape was within reach of small farmers and businesses - it's not surprising it would soon take off and become a sure fired success.
In 1958 new adaptations led to an overall enlargement of the body and the introduction of a cab with doors, a mounted headlight at the front instead of the old mudguard and a 170cc engine. Since then little has changed other than variations in engine size,various styling changes and the development of some models to adapt the vehicles for particular uses. There have been all sorts of variants produced over time and there is no space to list them all here, but if interested anyone can check out the details on the internet. Production has run in to the millions of units since it first started and at one point production at the Pontedera factory near Pisa was running at more than 10,000 a year. In 1999 Piaggio opened a factory in India for the sale of Apes there and in the far east. Today this iconic little vehicle meets the strictest European emission regulations and an electric version has gone in to production too.
I laughed when I also discovered that more recently Apes have been produced in what the marketing people have called "lifestyle" models including the Ape Cross Country. Production at Piaggio's India factory has also enabled the little Italian Ape to be adapted into whats been dubbed an "autorickshaw" or tuc tuc - perfect for negotiating India's crowded city streets.
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| The little APE that parks near our garage in Citta della Pieve |
Apes are made by the well known Italian firm of Piaggio and to understand their origin its interesting to consider the start up of the company in 1884. Founded by Rinaldo Piaggio early manufacture concentrated on locomotives and carriages but during World War 1 production shifted to aircraft and this continued in the post-war period. During World War 2 bomber aircraft were made, but by the end of hostilities the Piaggio factory at Pontedera near Pisa had been decimated by enemy aircraft. Enrico Piaggio, son of Rinaldo the founder of the company, decided it was time to take it in a new direction and to concentrate on the design and production of vehicles which would aid Italy's economic reconstruction and would provide cheap, reliable methods of transportation for the masses. Aeronautical designer Carradino D'Ascanio, who'd been involved in the design process leading to the first modern helicopter, turned his talents to the new project which had a strict design brief.
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| Corradino D'Ascanio, seated, discusses a design with a colleague. |
The new vehicle had to be:
1. easy to drive for both men and women, 2. able to carry a passenger, 3. not get the owner's clothes dirty (this is Italy after all!). The result - the design and production of the Italian Vespa two wheeled scooter which went into production in 1946. Within ten years over a million of them had been produced and sold!
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| The Vespa 48 launched in 1946 |
The Vespa fulfilled the design brief beautifully and its not surprising it became a runaway success, but it didn't address the problem of the lack of four wheeled vehicles much needed for moving goods around from one place to another. In 1947 D'Ascanio took on the task of designing a petrol driven, cheap to build vehicle which could act as a workhorse and help get the Italian economy going again. This time the result was not a four wheeled vehicle but one with three and the solution was easy - turn the amazing little Vespa scooter into a three wheeled vehicle which could carry goods. Essentially it was a three wheeled vehicle (one at the front and two at the back) with a flat bed mounted over the extended axle but driven in exactly the same way as the scooter! The scooter had been named a VESPA which translates into English as 'wasp' and though when the first model of the new vehicle went into production in 1948 it was called a TRIVESPA - it was soon rebranded an APE which translates into english as a 'bee'. This was a much cleverer name as it connected it to the vespa and espoused the positive work ethic image the company wanted to emphasize. The first Ape cost 170,000 lire and it was available in 50cc, 125cc and 150cc engine variations. With its easy to drive handle bar mechanism, low fuel consumption, versatility and a reasonable cost the new Ape was within reach of small farmers and businesses - it's not surprising it would soon take off and become a sure fired success.
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| The Piaggio APE Mark 1 - 1948 |
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| The Ape factory production line at Pntedera, Pisa. |
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| 1964 Ape with a cab at the front |
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| The APE Autorickshaw extensively used in Indian cities. |
Its been a lot of fun finding interesting photographs of APES being used to carry unusual loads or where adaptations have been made to the vehicle to suit it to different purposes. Here are three of my favourites.
As Piaggio as a company has changed from privately owned family firm to a shares based limited company (2006) and its interests have expanded overseas, so the fortunes of its products have changed too. Over the years the production of Apes has declined in Italy and risen in India where production costs are much cheaper. It's sad that Piaggio announced on October 16th 2013 that the manufacture of Apes in Italy would cease and that all models would be entirely made in India. I am not sure if that has happened yet but it's yet another example of globalization, economies of scale and accountancy decisions impacting on local economies and accentuating decline in one place in favour of another. On a more positive note - this little vehicle has to be seen as a 20th century design phenomenon which not only helped the Italian post war reconstruction but went on to become a classic. Long may its production continue - wherever it is made!! Oh and I almost forgot - at a Wisconsin classic car auction held in 2013 a 1963 APE Model C was to be sold with a pre-sale estimate of 5 - 10 thousand dollars. It sold for the healthy sum of 25,300 dollars!!!
Ciao & KBO - Ian
PS - Just watched "The Second Best Marigold Hotel" which has a number of scenes in involving APE Indian taxis!!!!
AND - as of March 2017 - there's been another spate of TV programmes with an Indian setting including "The Real Marigold Hotel" on the BBC & "The Good Karma Hospital" on ITV - tuc tucs by the hundred!!
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