Italian designer Giulio Iacchetti has reinterpreted the classic concept of the Vespa. Starting with the silhouette of the world’s most famous scooter, he has developed a dynamic, light design, with a “cantilevered” seat that links back to the very first Vespa, the 98cc launched by the company based in Pontedera in 1946.
The typical lateral shells have been sacrificed to lighten up the design of the chassis, also in light of the fact that the electric motor occupies much less space than the traditional gas motor.
Everything deemed superfluous has been eliminated: the idea is to make a scooter heedful of tradition, but at the same time with a slim, ecological body, for greater agility in city traffic.
All the controls, the speedometer, fuel gauge, and lights are provided with an app: a smartphone can be inserted in a special compartment on the dash, using a wireless connection to all the sensors of the Vespa. The phone recharges from the electrical system of the vehicle (and is protected from the weather by a transparent cover).
The front headlight conserves the classic circular Vespa design, but thanks to the use of LEDs it loses its droplet shape, making room for the smartphone housing. The design of the handlebar features an original and novel insertion of the brake levers, in perfect harmony with the handgrips. The slim rearview mirrors contain the turn signals, while skid-proof rubber segments on the footboard add another unusual, appealing detail.
The Vespampère sets out to reconnect with the finest tradition of the Italian scooter, when the actors in Neorealist films rode on slimmer bikes, the stylistic opposite of the latest Vespa generations, which have gotten “heavier” over the years – as Claudio Rocca, Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence writes – due to design that leans towards “applied bodybuilding”: a concept of hypertrophy that can also (unfortunately) be extended to the automotive world today.
all images © Avisualization |Alessandro Trigila & Matteo Rossi