Alongside the success of scooters and taking advantage of the great ease of municipal licenses for drivers, the famous Cucciolo appeared in Portugal, with engines coming from Italy that, when applied to bicycles, allowed them to run on their own and would become an inexpensive means of transport in the aftermath of World War II.

The word cucciolo, which in Italian means puppy, gave its name to the small engine made at the Siata Factory in Turin. In 1948, the small engine began to be built in large series, leaving behind razors, calculators, radios, and many other devices from the Ducati brand.

The engines were exported all over the world.

In Portugal, the dynamic Carlos Tomás (one of the pioneers of ready-to-wear in Cascais, owner of Casa Tomás, on Rua Direita) decided to import a few Cucciolo engines, since compared to the Italian Lira, the Portuguese currency in 1948 was quite strong.

He then went to the Águeda area, where he knew several bicycle brands were built, and made a contract with the industrialist Constantino Ferreira da Silva, so that he would supply him with the first complete frames for the Cucciolo engines, already with a fork with a shock absorber.

The success of the cucciolo led many companies to start importing “mopeds” such as Alpino, Pellegrino, Ilo from Italy, DKW, NSU, Victoria, Zundapp, Sachs and Lutz from Germany, etc.

However, the Portuguese state never granted a license for imports in quantity, only allowing very small quotas, so the importers, seeing the success of such machines among the population, decided to import only engines, and a huge moped industry began to develop in Portugal.