Letter From Europe
LETTER FROM Europe
ROUNDUP
Milan: The Italian celebration of motorcycling
Italy’s bi-annual Milan show clocked up its golden anniversary when the doors opened last winter. The European counterpart to the glamorous Tokyo Motor Show, the Milan exhibition is a showcase event for the European motorcycle manufacturers. The Japanese have a presence, but the event is primarily for the Europeans.
This year, some of the manufacturers showed their first response to Italy’s compulsory helmet law instituted in mid1986. As soon as the law was in place, there was an immediate drop in sales, especially in bikes marketed at style-conscious teenagers. It seems that Italian youths think there’s not much point in owning the latest I25cc street racer or Paris-to-Dakar mini-clone if people can’t see who they are.
The end result is that some Italian manufacturers have begun to look at ways to attract more mature riders.
One of the best examples of this at the Milan show was Moto Guzzi, which has stopped trying to compete with Güera and Aprilia in the I25cc class. Instead, Guzzi launched its first overhead-camshaft engine in many years, fitting it into the swoopy 350 Falco. Beneath the shapely, redand-white bodywork lies a revised four-valve version of a well-proven aircooled four-stroke engine. Larger-displacement versions will appear next year, including a lOOOcc design. A performance model is also likely, fitted to the current Le Mans, which, as displayed at Milan, shows a welcome improvement in styling.
Other Guzzis on display included the latest version of the California III touring bike, which is now a Latin Aspencade with a full, three-box luggage kit and revamped bodywork; and a 750cc version of the NTX maxi-enduro, a racing version of which will compete in Paris-toDakar.
If the wings of the Guzzi eagle had every reason to perk up a bit, the revitalization of the Benelli marque was also encouraging. No fourstrokes were on display, rather, a new range of snazzy 125cc bikes powered by a two-stroke reed-valve engine. Most stunning of the Benellis was the Jarno, clothed in neo-Bimota bodywork. The slick styling is hardly surprising, since designer Adanti used to work for the Rimini firm.
At the Cagiva/Ducati booth, Ducati launched the long-awaited liquidcooled, eight-valve VTwin. As expected, there are two versions—a racer and a roadster. In tri-color Italian livery, the racing version is not quite a fullon Marco Lucchinelli racer, but it’s close, with a claimed 120 bhp at the crankshaft. Response to the racing version has been such that Ducati has now upped its original quota of just 30 racers to a total planned production of 200 machines, most destined for the U.S. and Japan for use in Superbike racing.
The roadster, on the other hand, comes in a more Cagiva-esque red, white and brown, and is called the 851 Superbike Strada, which will be built in considerably larger numbers than the racer. The first batch of 300 is due in March.
For many visitors, the centerpiece of the show was the curvaceous Gilera MX-l, a fully-faired I25cc streetbike with steel frame and alloy swingarm. This little beauty carries the fuel tank under the engine, which allowed designer Lucia Masut to use the area normally occupied by the tank as a trunk. The disguised compartment is large enough to hold a helmet.
Some of the smaller companies showed as much originality with the names of their machines as with the designs. The smaller stands housed such strange concoctions as trail bikes named the Wild Oxford, or the Fox and Horses; but Aprilia takes the prize with its Prince of Bombay enduro, replete with a map of India on the sidepanel. Of the smaller manufacturers, Magni was the most interesting, showing not only the fully faired Magni-Guzzi launched two years ago, but also an unfaired Classic version that should attract some customers from the more traditional end of the market.
Of interest, too, was the resurgence of the Mondial marque, whose world championship GP success in the 1950s was followed by a gradual decline into obscurity. Now the company has been relaunched with I25cc street models and a 250cc enduro, all powered by two-stroke Singles.
Milan 1987 showed an Italian industry prepared to fight its way out of recession, with more new models not yet launched scheduled to appear in the next 12 months. Too bad the British Triumph/ Matchless group didn’t want to join in: Its display consisted of three bikes standing behind a glass screen in back of a Harley-Davidson. There was a notice declaring that anyone who wanted a brochure or more information could write to an address in Milan. That’s precisely the sort of approach that got the British motorcycle industry into the kind of trouble that eventually proved terminal. The Italians, at least if the latest Milan show is an indication, have no intention of allowing a similar fate to befall them.
Alan Cathcart
