It’s hugely ironic, but nevertheless true, that motorcycles benefit from adversity. Or rather, the motorcycle industry which produces them, which several times since the motorcycle was first invented around 125 years ago, has seen its circumstances soar in times of misfortune, only frequently – though not always – to diminish when things are good. Powered two-wheelers provide basic personal transportation when other modes of doing so cannot – either post-conflict, when roads and railways have been destroyed, and/or during times of penury, when a barebones means of getting from A to B while consuming the least fuel possible, can literally be a lifesaver, or at least a life-changer.
A fine example of that was post-Second World War Italy. The bombed-out infrastructure which the conflict left in its wake meant that, post-liberation, a motorcycle was for many the only practical – let alone affordable – means of going about their everyday life. Hence the reason so many companies ended up making motorcycles, especially those with a newly defunct military footprint – like aircraft manufacturers banned under the Armistice from continuing to make planes. Several of those decided to diversify into the booming postwar market for motorcycles, including Piaggio, Aer Macchi, Agusta – and Caproni, Italy’s principal manufacturer of bomber aircraft pre-1945, whose unique Capriolo motorcycles were a direct result of the postwar peace dividend.
In 1908, German-speaking Gianni Caproni, 22, emigrated to Italy from his Alto Adige homeland, then a province of the Austro-Hungarian empire, before becoming part of Italy in 1919. There, he established Aero Caproni, which during the interwar Mussolini era became a major industrial conglomerate, whose 15 different factories employed 48,000 people – more than Fiat. Caproni was Italy’s pioneer aviator, and in May 1910 the first flight by an Italian-built aircraft took place from the factory he’d established at Vizzola, today the site of Pirelli’s test track adjacent to
