The Scene

THE SCENE

IVAN J. WAGAR

ITALY-beautiful, fantastic Italywhere anyone with half an appetite can easily gain five pounds in a week. For the tourist, Italy is the land of pasta and a liter of wine for lunch, with pasta and two liters of wine for dinner.

For a true motorcycle enthusiast, though, Italy is more than pasta and wine. Rather, it is a country which has to build the sexiest motorcycles in the world! Since the early 1930s, Italy has led the world in the art of creative genius in motorcycling. Whether it is a 120-degree V-twin, an in-line, water-cooled Four, or a simple air-cooled transverse Three, if it is different, Italian engineers will find a way to make it run and win races. And winning races is what Italy is all about. A taxi ride across Milan is a race; the driver takes great pride in every downshift, braking is hairline and performed with grace and skill, and collecting the fare is a pit stop-with any delay causing an open irritation.

This is Italy, where the working class dash around, downshifting without braking, and each one is a grand prix car driver capable of beating Surtees or Gurney. What is even more surprising is that almost everyone knows of the “Count.” The Count is a bit of a strange man. For a living he manufactures helicopters. A helicopter is a wingless device which flies, and carries passengers, but for some strange reason costs three or four times as much money to purchase as its winged counterpart. Thus, the Count is a very rich man, whether the money is counted in lire, francs or just plain old dollars.

For a hobby, the Count builds motorcycles. But not very many. The motorcycles are very special, and the whole year’s production of four machines generally costs in the neighborhood of $200,000. Now anyone with a grain of sense can tell right this minute that the Count does, indeed, have a hobby. There just isn’t any way he is going to show a profit at the end of the year. The tax man, too, must be somewhat bewildered when he learns that the Count will not, at any price, sell any of his four motorcycles.

Count Agusta is to motorcycles what Enzo Ferrari is to cars. The Count’s machines have won more world championships than any other brand. With the help of John Surtees, Mike Hailwood and the new movie idol, Giacomo Agostini,

the MV Agusta Fours and Threes have won countless grands prix.

In Italy, whether the name is Count Agusta or Enzo Ferrari, if he has a product that screams to victory over the world’s best, the government is quite enthused about the situation-to the extent that special monetary consideration is given. The tax-paying Italian workman would be the last to complain of such an arrangement. After all, they are all racers at heart, and a tew pennies here or there to see an Italian car or motorcycle beat the best in the world is its own reward. And that probably is the most beautiful thing about Italy. The national pride in racing machinery is completely overwhelming. It is fascinating to talk to a bellhop, who, while he doesn’t own a motorcycle or car, can tell you what Agostini eats for breakfast, how many races he has won, and the maximum revs of his MV Three.

It would require weeks to visit all of the small oneand two-man workshops devoted to racing which surround Milan. Because of the freedom of design in European grand prix racing, there are dozens of little shops turning out various odds and ends of an exotic nature. So it is possible, with the help of these superenthusiasts, to obtain just about anything from pistons to cams for almost any type of engine. There are, within a 50-mile radius, pattern makers, crankshaft grinders, valve seat specialists, and any number of gear manufacturers; the builder can, if he is any kind of a decent type, get by with a strong desire and a set of blueprints.

One small shop retails racing odds and ends. The proprietor, Sr. Menani, stocks custom fiberglass tanks, racing tires, hubs, rims, sprockets, leathers, levers and helmets, just to briefly outline the inventory. At the rear of the premises there is a small, almost hobby-like machine shop, where all of the clip-on handlebar assemblies for Aermacchi Har-

ley-Davidson are produced. Around the corner in a cellar, with the help of one lathe hand, Daniel Fontana produces his beautiful brake assemblies.

A block up the street is the garage where Fontana keeps his dohc three-cylinder racer. The engine is a masterpiece, and looks as if it were built in an aircraft factory. Unfortunately Fontana must spend most of his time building brakes to earn bread, and development ot the Three is a very slow process. Unfortunately, too, Fontana has not reached the big league and therefore does not qualify for government assistance in his endeavors.

Elsewhere on the outskirts of Milan a man has realized the inevitable end of the British Norton Manx and G50 Matchless racers for the private owners, and has devised a way of coupling two HarleyDavidson Sprint engines on a common crankcase. The man is no other than Lino Tonti, who has, at one time or another, taken part in the design of the most imaginitive racing machines of all time. Tonti not only engineered the extremely fast Bianchi Twins of the early 1960 era, but also had a hand in the development of the world’s fastest Single, the 250-cc Morini. When Tonti made public his intentions to produce a batch of 500-cc Twins, he was besieged by orders, and within a week had deposits on 12 of the 64-bhp racers (five more horsepower than a very good Manx).

Lino Tonti is now employed by Moto Guzzi, a firm that needs no introduction among motorcycle enthusiasts. He replaces the genius Giulio Carcano. Carcano is the man who said a single-cylinder motorcycle could win a world championship, after the motorcycle racing fraternity had resigned to the fate of the all-conquering Fours. Carcano contended that a Single offered so many advantages in light weight, low center of gravity and improved streamlining, that the lower power output could be offset. The next year, Keith Campell, an Australian, won the 350-cc world championship on a Moto Guzzi Single against the Twins and Fours, proving Carcano’s calculations.

To aid in the design of his new lightweight, streamlined Moto Guzzis, Carcano constructed a wind tunnel at the factory, and, for many years, Moto Guzzi was the only factory to use such exotic techniques. In addition to being an expert in aerodynamics, Carcano’s first love is hydrodynamics, and sailboat hull design. He now has left Moto Guzzi to become a self-employed consultant on hull shapes, and is concentrating on the classic 5.5-meter hull at the present time.

Whether it is the scenery, pasta, wine, or some combination, the Italians have a lovable desire for wild machinery. And, regardless of the time and effort involved, they help one another produce these creations. Just about paradise for a motorcycle lover. Ciao, baby. [Ö]