Great Guzzis

Great Guzzis

Italy's Favorite Motorcycle Company, 70 Years Old And Still Going Strong

WARS HAVE A WAY OF GIVING THEIR PARTICIPANTS reason to ponder the complexities of life. Often, the thinking runs something like this: “If I make it through, I’m going to get my act together and Do Something.” Carlo Guzzi was such a man. As a master mechanic in the Italian Air Force during the First World War, he was responsible for keeping frail Aermacchi and Caproni biplanes in the air in the struggle against the Austrians. But in his off-hours, he talked with his buddies about the future.

At war’s end, Guzzi and one of his pilot friends, Giorgio Parodi, got together to build a motorcycle. Two things worked in their favor. First, Guzzi’s family had some property on the eastern shore of Lake Como, in a little fishing village called Mandello del Lario in the north of Italy. Carlo finagled the use of one of the buildings on that property. Second, Parodi’s father was a very successful businessman who agreed to stake the pair’s venture.

Guzzi and Parodi put together a beautiful 500cc, single-

cylinder engine with a bevel-driven overhead cam in a four-valve head. A gear-driven primary operated a three-speed hand-shift transmission. They laid the engine fiat, facing forward, in a tubular frame that used a rigid rear end and a girder fork. It was completed in 1920

and christened the G.P., after the pair’s respective initials.

The G.P. was a gorgeous machine, but too expensive to mass-produce. So it was back to the drawing board. Guzzi redesigned the engine using a much less costly two-valve, exhaust-over-intake system. A year later, in 1921, the first Moto Guzzi production model, a 500cc machine called the Normale, rolled off the Mandello assembly line using this revised engine.

Then, as now, status was achieved from competition success, so the first two machines completed were entered in the Milan-Naples Race, a long-distance, over-the-road event. They finished 21st and 22nd. A month later, in the prestigious Targa Florio, a roadrace around the island of Sicily, a Moto Guzzi won its first victory, and the immediate future of the company was assured.

Guzzi went back to thinking about improving his engine, and by 1922, he developed the C2V, a competition model with overhead valves. This he entered in the Lario TT, an annual roadrace that in the 1920s was the Continental equivalent of the Isle of Man TT. The C2V was immediately successful, winning the 500cc class in this event for four straight years. This success produced a demand so great that the Sport, a street version of the C2V, soon was introduced to supplant the Normale. Guzzi’s next step was to resurrect his original four-valve, ohc concept, which became the C4V racing model of 1924, and which won that year’s Italian Grand Prix. This engine, with occasional mechanical improvements, was available to racing-minded customers for the next 10 years.

Though keenly interested in racing, Guzzi realized that most of his customers were street-oriented. So he and brother Giuseppe went to work on one of the major problems of the era: the bashing riders took as they rode their mounts over terrible roads with just a girder fork to fend off the blows. In 1928, they introduced the GT500, with a rear swingarm attached to twin shocks mounted under the bike’s engine. That 500cc flat-Single, with many variations and modifications, stayed in the Moto Guzzi catalog from 1921 until 1976. It had many designations, and in its final incarnation was known as the Falcone, the most familiar-to Americans at least-of the Guzzi Singles.

In spite of his remarkable success with Singles, Carlo Guzzi was not fixated on them. He built an unsuccessful grand prix 500cc Four in 1931. Two years later, this was followed by his highly successful TT500-in effect, a pair of ohc 250s working on a single crankshaft at a 120-degree angle. On this bike, Stanley Woods won the Senior TT at the 1935 Isle of Man, the first victory in that race by a nonBritish bike since 1911.

Guzzi was involved in a welter of other projects, too, including a 500cc Triple touring machine built in 1933 but abandoned because of its manufacturing expense, and a 500cc Triple GP machine introduced in 1939, just as the country became embroiled in World War II. The outbreak of hostilities put an end to this effort.

In the war’s aftermath, Guzzi responded to the need for cheap, reliable transportation by introducing, in 1946, the “65,” also called the Guzzino. This was a bicycle-like affair that, with its name changed to Cardellino, stayed in the Guzzi line for 20 years. In 1953, the Guzzino was followed by the 98cc Zigolo, a two-stroke that did have a Guzziesque look, as its single cylinder was positioned flat, facing forward. But old Carlo’s heart wasn’t in two-strokes, and he is reputed to have commented, “They aren’t real Guzzis,” in spite of the fact that their sales helped keep the company afloat in the difficult period immediately following the war.

The company returned to grand prix racing after the war, taking a number of world championships with 250 and 350 Singles. But the most impressive effort was the fabulous Giulio Cesere Carcano-designed V-Eight, introduced in 1955. This was liquid-cooled, with gear-driven overhead cams, eight tiny carbs and chain drive. By 1957, it was developed into a winner. But the Italian economy had fallen onto hard times, and the factory’s racing budget was dropped at the end of that year. The company’s finances were a mess. Because Carlo Guzzi’s health was poor, control of the company had passed to Enrico Parodi, the son of Giorgio, who unfortunately lacked the business acumen of his father. Moto Guzzi got caught up by the Italian semigovernmental umbrella groups designed to help struggling businesses. In Moto Guzzi’s case, this helped very little.

But what the company had going for it was the advent of a new cross-frame V-Twin engine. The engine was designed, it is said, to power escort motorcycles for then-Italian President Giovanni Gronchi, who apparently admired the Harley-Davidson police bikes he’d seen in the United States. But the engine was mainly intended for a rugged, three-wheeled utility vehicle called the “Mulo Meccanico,” examples of which still occasionally can be seen tmndling around Italy. In its original 703cc version, the engine produced about 50 horsepower, but was so overbuilt that it would last an owner’s lifetime. Gradually it was pumped up to 750, 850 and lOOOcc sizes. It was meant to be a workhorse, not a sporting powerplant, and it did its job exceedingly well in the variety of bikes it powered.

In 1972, Moto Guzzis once again took on a sporting edge, thanks to the introduction of the 750 V7 Sport, which used a thoroughly reworked version of the V-Twin motor wrapped in a braced, low-slung frame, all for one purpose: to do battle in the 750 production racing classes that were so popular in Italy in the 1970s.

Racing, however, couldn’t save the struggling company, and in 1973 it was sold to Alejandro de Tomaso, the ItaloArgentine businessman who also acquired control of Maserati and Ghia. Moto Guzzi’s fortunes once again took an upswing, and though the company’s engineers experimented with a variety of alternative engine configurations, the familiar V-Twin design continued to thrive, appearing in 350cc, 500cc, 650cc, 750cc and lOOOcc designs, with styling in all shapes, from standards to cruisers, touring bikes to sport machines. The latest, of course, is the longawaited Daytona 1000, production of which, like their best wines, the Italians have been unwilling to hurry.

In Italy, Moto Guzzis provoke the same passions as Harley-Davidsons do in the U.S. Old ones never die, they just get rebuilt. Owner clubs proliferate, a dealer is never more than an hour away, restoration shops are filled with business, a Guzzi-specific aftermarket flourishes, and at least once a month there is a major Guzzi get-together somewhere.

In the U.S., Guzzisti tend to be as loyal and steadfast as their Italian brothers, though Italians can choose from among 17 models of the V-Twin, while Americans must make do with just the four models currently being supplied by Moto America, the Moto Guzzi importer.

With production of about 6000 units per year, Moto Guzzi likely never will become a really well-known name. Still, this low-tech Twin manages to have a special appeal that’s difficult to explain. Many Guzzi owners don’t even try. They merely say, “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.”

Clement Salvadori