Friends, the ’50s were a time of design. Hot Off the Big Dub Dub Dos – that’s World War II for those who don’t listen to the excellent Behind the Bastards history podcast – the sky was the limit, as the world entered the nuclear and space age, and military surplus was just about everywhere, making it incredibly easy for designers to repurpose weapons of war, or their designs, to do whatever they wanted.
The result were vehicles that looked like they were ready to either destroy Berlin or take Neil Armstrong to the moon – sometimes a combination of the two. Think of the belly tankers that once roamed the Mojave and Salt Flats with roaring V8s and little or no passenger protection.
There was a machine like this one I didn’t even know about until I was reading friends’ stories on the web, and it came from an unexpected source: i.e., scooter extraordinaire, Vespa. Have you all ever seen the 1951 Vespa Siluro?
It was brought back to the forefront of the internet’s consciousness by our friends Jalopnik (Hello, Lalita!), the Vespa Siluro—torpedo in Italian—was an alcohol-powered single-cylinder two-stroke streamliner designed to break the then-current flying kilometer record. As far as alcohol powered Siluro goes, it was probably race-spec, but in my heart, I really hope it was something like grappa.
And it broke the record, setting the record with a time of 20.24 seconds at an average speed of 106 mph. Imagine driving a Vespa at 106 mph? I know the Siluro was far more streamlined and race-ready than your average modern Vespa, but still. Add aluminum skin that was probably as sharp as your average switchblade, a gas tank full of alcohol, and a rider that was probably running on espresso and cigarettes, and woof, who would be sketchy.
According to Vespa’s own history, “In 1951, Vespa broke its most prestigious record: the flying kilometer. On February 9, between the 10th and 11th kilometers of Rome’s motorway (near Ostia) ran a Vespa engine with two opposed pistons (power: 17.2 hp and 9500 rpm), designed by Corradino d’Ascanio, and led by Dino Mazzoncini. In, the average speed of the flying kilometer is 17.1 km/h with a record time of 21 seconds and 4 cents.”
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that this was all done on a public highway outside Rome. And you know it was not closed to motorists at that time. Vespa just went out and went for it. As you did before.
The whole saga makes me yearn for the space-age designs of yesteryear, however, everything modern today looks bland in comparison. Sure, they weren’t as fast as today’s machines, but they certainly looked better and more futuristic than anything we invented.
