Moto Guzzi Le Mans 1000
MOTO GUZZI LE MANS 1000
From the shores of Lago di Como, a lesson in Style
STEVEN L. THOMPSON
NOBODY CAN DEFINE FLASH, but everybody knows what it is. Cruiser riders know, for sure, and so do café berserkos. Likewise for Gold Wingers and other full-dress touring types. And most certainly, riders of bikes like Moto Guzzi's Le Mans 1000 know precisely what Flash is all about. Park the Le Mans next to this week's chartbusters-it doesn't matter which ones, but for argument's sake, try the 600 Ninja, GSX-R750, FZ750 and VF1000R-and the crowds will gather first and stay longest at the ar rest-me-red flanks of the Guzzi.
This phenomenon is certain to in furiate any technoids in the area, as well as the proud owners of the technowonders. But that's Flash in action. In the real world, where the nuances of enthusiast taste just don't compute, an ounce of Flash is worth a pound of performance. .
Examine the details of the Guzzi and you emerge puzzled as to why it should drive otherwise rational men to part with $4685 to own it, at least if engineering is your yardstick. Here is a hoary old overhead-valve, air cooled, shaft-drive V-Twin, origi nally designed in the late 1 950s, cra died in a mild-steel tube frame, breathing through a couple of lowtech 40mm Dell'Ortos and pumping out whatever power its 10. 1: 1 com pression ratio can muster. Two Koni 7610 shocks attempt to minimize the shaft-drive-induced chassis-jacking in back, and Guzzi's own air-assisted fork straddles the new 16-inch front wheel. A stamped fork brace helps battle twisting forces generated by the huge Pirelli Phantoms. Three 270mm floating discs interconnected through Moto Guzzi's Integral Brak ing System are expected to haul the 474-pound package to a stop. As configured in its 1985 guise, the Le Mans formula is much as it has been since 1976. That's when the V-7 Sport originally designed by Lino Tonti became the first Le Mans. Alejandro de Tomaso, honcho su preme of Moto Guzzi, has kept the bike more or less up with current trends in such matters as wheel size, styling and items like the floating discs, while more or less leaving the basic powertrain and chassis alone.
And that's what makes the tech noids crazy. Here's a motorcycle whose essentials haven't been changed since 1971 (well, okay, if you insist on considering the cast wheels and bikini fairing part of the package, then make that 1976) that somehow manages still to out-run the latest Oriental iron in the Flash race. Not only that, in the hands of such riders as Greg Smrz, of Dr. John's Team Moto Guzzi, the Le Mans 1000 this year has also managed to humiliate a considerable number of far more sophisticated machines in endurance roadracing.
Some people will tell you that a Guzzi Le Mans is of interest to sport riders only because it's "different." Bushwa, sahib, pure bushwa. In its 850 Mark III configuration, the Le Mans was a classic Italian sportbike; a seat like a pine rail, a ride like a buckboard, a powerband like a BMW Boxer on steroids, and handling like a brutal 1 970s production racer. The Le Mans 1000 is all of that, and more. The 5mm bore increase, the 0.3: 1 compression-ratio increase, the 4mm increase in carb size, the use of the B10 cam (previously part of the Stage One racing kit), and the pay attention handling imparted by the 16-inch front wheel and its accompa nying new steering geometry mean that to go Ninja-fast on this bike you have to be really good. You work hard. The engine seems soggy below 5000 rpm, then thunders to life like a locomotive about to blow its boiler. The gearbox-still notchy enough to guarantee a missed shift for the un wary-conspires with the drivetrain to induce events in the chassis that demand you to get set up for that high-pucker, bumpy, off-camber sweeper well before you'd have to with a modern Japanese sportbike. And even with the new, Grab-On style foam handgrips, the bike shakes and vibrates through your gloves like some uncaged monster as you dial up the exit power.
The result of this, friends, is not a bike you hate, but a bike you love.
Confusing? Only to technoids. Look at it this way: How many people real/v use all the tire and lean they have available with any bike, let alone a mind-squasher like a Ninja? How many riders are good enoughor crazy, brave or stupid enough-to make every ride on their sportbike a simulated run between Ballacraine and Ballaugh Bridge? The allure of this Guzzi is that it makes every ride feel as if it were just that sort of pseudo-race-yet you take far fewer chances to achieve the feeling, simply because the feeling comes at lower speeds. Crouched behind the little fairing on a new-style seat that is no less uncomfortable than the old, more thinly padded 2-by-4, you feel the part as much as you look the part.
hideed, a ride on the Le Mans 1 000 isn't just a trip, it's a theatrical event. The rider travels in a perpetual spotlight, the great swoops of ABS bodywork acting as wonderful stage props, probably better for show than speed, the factory's claims of windtunnel development notwithstand ing. In fact, that earnest claim of sci entific development, that fading glory of long-ago Grand Prix suprem acy, that special desirability con ferred by rarity, that whole marvel ous Moto Guzzi mélange acts to enhance the effect of the Le Mans show, both for the rider and the audience.
All these qualities are the hall marks of True Flash, and they serve to hammer home the point so many technoids never grasp: Where homo saps are concerned, perception is re ality. And while a True Believer of the Scuffed Knee School may think that the reality of the Le Mans 1000 is that it's just new bits hung on an old bike, outside his tiny fraternity of fa natics, nobody will much care, least of all the Le Mans rider. You don't argue with Flash, see. You just enjoy it-if you have it.
And this piece otitaliana most del initely has it. Just ask the man who owns one. If you can get to him through the crowd around his bike.
