The Glory of Gilera
The Glory of Gilera
The rebirth of a firm that’s been in business since 1909
THE BUSINESS OF BUILDING motorcycles and selling them is not an easy one. If you don’t believe it, just solicit testimony from the ghosts of those who have tried over the past century. Companies that have survived have done so as a result of more than mere luck. A lot more.
Güera, a small-scale manufacturer founded, in 1909, is one of those few survivors. Born in the very first hours of the age of motor vehicles, this fine old firm, today equipped with progressive management, forward-looking chassis designs, avant-garde styling and contemporary engineering, seems set to step smartly and successfully into the next century. But getting this far hasn’t been easy.
The company carries the name of the man who founded it— Giuseppe Güera, born December 21, 1887, in a hamlet outside Milano. According to Raymond Ainscoe’s excellent book Güera Road Racers, at the age of 15, with little formal schooling to his credit. Güera began his career. He became an apprentice at the Bianchi motorcycle works in Milano, itself founded in 1897, and eventually moved on to Geneva, where he went to work first for Moto Reve, and later for Bucher, both Swiss motorcycle builders that have long since disappeared.
By 1908, Güera was racing and winning hillclimb meets, and by 1909, he was back in Milano
building his own motorcycle, a bicycle-like contraption powered by a 317cc Single. The nearly brakeless, 165-pound machine was said to have been capable of more than 60 miles an hour, and was raced successfully wherever there was
competition—board tracks, hillclimbs or roadraces. Building on his successes in those events, Güera moved his premises to Arcore, near Monza, w'here it stands today.
While the Güera plant grew to pump out a wide variety of relatively pedestrian equipment, it also was, by the 1930s, crafting a series of extremely successful four-cylinder racebikes with roller bearings, perimeter frames, liquid cooling and superchargers. These bikes beat the best from BMW, Moto Guzzi and Norton on Europe's roadrace tracks, and as if that wasn’t enough, in 1937, using an aerodynamic fairing based on aircraft design, one of them set a speed record of 170.37 mph over the flying kilometer.
As they had been during World War I, Gilera’s activities were interrupted by World War II, and at its conclusion, when racing was allowed to resume, a redrawn set of rules outlawed supercharging. This meant that Gilera’s fabulous blown Fours were obsolete.
Prior to the war, Gilera had built a 496cc Single-powered,
road-going sports machine called the Saturno, and this pushrod design was quickly overhauled for interim racing service, and won its first time out. By 1949, Gilera was ready with an unblown Four, and that became the company’s firstline racer. Nevertheless, the company continued to construct a small run of Saturnos, and these were used in national competition, in much revised and updated form, through the 1960s. Ultimately, a pair of dohc Saturnos was built under the aegis of Luigi Gilera, Giuseppe's brother, though these, having met only limited success, ultimately were consigned to the factory’s crusher. Today, with help from Japanese finance, new life has been given the Saturno name, which has been attached to a very sporting 500cc Single introduced in 1989. This latter-day Saturno is, along with other designs such as the CX, one of several bikes helping to breath new viability into the old firm.
Gilera’s final phase of racing glory came in the 1950s as a result of the redesign of the Four. The resulting machine, ridden by Geoff Duke and Dickie Dale, gave crowds some of the best racing of the era, with Duke winning three 500cc world championships aboard Gilera GP machinery.
For a time, it seemed as though nothing could stop the rise of Gilera’s fortunes. But then, in October of 1956, Ferruccio Gilera, manager of the firm’s race shop and the only son of the firm’s founder, died. And with his son’s death, the burning interest not only in racing but in the business of motorcycle development and production, left the old man. The firm went into decline, production dwindled to a trickle, bankruptcy loomed. And in 1969, Gilera was sold to the industrial firm
Gruppo Piaggio, builder of Vespa scooters. Guisseppi Gilera died two years later.
The occasional rumor to the contrary, Piaggio has evidenced scant interest in a return to the grand prix wars, so Gileristi have had to satisfy themselves with the occasional appearance of classic machines from the Gilera equipe at vintage race meets.
But to see one of them, just once, to listen to the eerie cry of the Four on a fog-shrouded morning, or to the urgent, presto staccato rhythm of one of the old Saturnos, is to hear the sound of greatness. And to do that is to come a bit closer to understanding the glory of Gilera.
Jon F. Thompson
