Victim of Affluence

In 1946, Industrialist Ferdinando Innocenti had an idea that put a nation on wheels. He made a stubby, inexpensive motor scooter: something more than a bike but less than a motorcycle. He called it the Lambretta, and Italians, too poor to buy autos, rapidly embraced it as their family vehicle. Premier Alcide de Gasperi boasted before he died that his regime had "given the motor scooter to the people." Pope Pius XII once publicly praised the motor scooters for "raising the level of life of the social categories who cannot buy more costly means of transport.'' Archbishop Giovanni Battista Montini (now Pope Paul VI) put touring lay brothers on Lambrettas, gaining for them the name "Flying Friars."

Now, however, Italians can afford to buy cars, and they are swapping their Lambrettas for compact Fiats. In 1970. only 55,000 Lambrettas were sold compared with 180,000 a decade earlier. Faced with the realities of a stronger economy, the late Innocenti's son and nephew, who now run his company, have stopped production of the Lambretta in Italy but will keep a parts depot. They are arranging a deal with the Indian government and a Bombay company to move Lambretta production to India beginning in 1974. The Innocenti firm will have a minority interest in the operation.

Lambretta's Italian competitor, the Vespa, has also been hurt by the auto. But Vespas will continue to be produced at home, leaving the Italian people at least a whisper of a past era.

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