When Ape was born, Vespa was only two years old and had already found a place in the heart of Italians, who had been getting back on their feet after the tragedy of war. Piaggio asked engineer Corradino D’Ascanio yet another creative effort and he didn’t disappoint: using Vespa as an inspiration, he conceived the first model of a three-wheel van Piaggio wanted to launch for freight transport. And, of course, its name had to recall that of Vespa: as it was a work vehicle, thoughts were bound to go to the laborious bee, “ape.” It was 1948 and the first Ape was nothing more than a Vespa with a trailer. 

Ape was very different from the large, military inspired trucks or the slow and heavy three-wheeled vans one would see on the road in those years, and certainly much more comfortable than those tricycles used to deliver goods from one corner of a city to the other.