Enrico Piaggio: An Italian Dream

Pontedera, 1945. Enrico Piaggio’s factory is in rubble. Piaggio feels the enormous responsibility that rests on his shoulders: the life of many families depends on his ability to create a new job. A project is beginning to form in his mind, a dream: to create a means of transport that is small, agile and economical, but capable of reviving mobility and boosting recovery. The road to affirmation, for Piaggio and its creature, is fraught with obstacles. An avid financier, Rocchi Battaglia, uses every means to take possession of the factory. Piaggio understands that his scooter, the Vespa, can and must become “the icon of rebirth” and so, when he learns that the American director William Wyler will shoot the film Roman Holiday (1953) in Italy, he sends Suso, a young and talented employee of the public office, to make contact with him to convince him to make the Vespa the “carriage of Cinderella” on which to make the two young and in love protagonists travel.