1959 Vespa 400 Convertible

The Vespa 400 was designed in Italy and built in France by the Piaggio Company, the parent company of Vespa Motor Scooters. The little car boasts interesting features like some surprising leg room for two occupants; wide rear-hinged doors made entering and exiting quite easy; and it has a 67-inch wheelbase, a 113-inch length, and a turning circle of under 25 feet. The front suspension is a variation of the strut-type layout now finding increasing favour among racing and sports cars. Rack and pinion steering is located in the free bonnet space above the driver's knees. A really different feature is the two-stroke engine, which uses a gas-oil mixture of 50-to-1. It has a five-gallon gas tank; four-wheel hydraulic brakes; and another curious features, a false grill in the front of the car. The 'grille' is actually a drawer, which pulls out to hold a 12-volt battery; and the hydraulic master cylinder, with its glass reservoir so you can easily check the fluid level. It has an air-cooled engine with a belt-driven fan to cool it. Three Vespas started and three Vespas finished in the famous Monte Carlo Rally, driving over 2,000 miles on ice, shown, and difficult roads.

Piaggio, funded in 1884 as a shipbuilder, was before and through WWII one of Italy's biggest airplane manufacturers. Forced by the Marshall Plan, the company changed production to the Vespa motor scooter and the Ape three-wheel light truck in the late forties. Both models became extremely successful and were soon recognized as true icons of the Italian road culture of the 1950s and 1960s.

Approximately 34,000 Vespa 400 cars were produced in France from 1957 through 1961 (they were designed by Italians and built by Frenchmen). The Vespa 400 premiered at the Paris Auto Salon in 1957. Its main competition was the Citroen 2 CV and the Renault 4. Of those, approximately 1,650 were imported into the United States. The price was $1,080 FOB in NY, NY. The Vespa has a 5-foot, 7-inch wheelbase and an overall length of 9 feet, 5 inches with a turning radius under 25 feet. The engine is a 2-cylinder, 2-cycle, air-cooled unit producing about 20 horsepower. It has rack-and-pinion steering and a 4-wheel (10-inch) independent suspension. The front panel is a pull-out drawer housing the battery. In the same area is the master cylinder with its unique glass jar reservoir. The Vespa car features suicide doors with sliding windows and a roll-down convertible top. Although small in size, a tall person can easily be accommodated with the adjustment of the seat.

This car won it's AACA 1st Junior at the 2005 National Spring meet in Greensburg, PA and its AACA Senior Award at the 2005 National Fall Meet in Jeffersonville, IN. It was designed by Carradino d'Ascanio for the Piaggio company and built by ACMA (Ateliers de construction de motorcycles et d'automobiles), which was better known for its popular Vespa motor scooters).

Today, Piaggio is still the world's biggest scooter manufacturer - and still makes the Ape three-wheel truck. And still, the engines are tiny: Even after 65 years of production the smallest commercial vehicle starts with a 2.4 horsepower 50cc two-stroke while the 218cc 'big block' puts on 9.5 horsepower, and the Diesel version with 422cc and 12.2 horsepower.