Guzzi's Progress

Guzzi's Progress

A pair of deuces

AFTER 25 YEARS UNDER the penny-pinching control of financier Alessandro de Tomaso, Moto Guzzi at last is receiving the investment it’s been starving for. Finprogetti, the company’s new majority owner, is pushing ahead with new computers, machines and manpower.

As if to signify that this fine old company has turned an important comer, it has released revised versions of two well-accepted members of its product line.

First, Guzzi smoothed out the rough edges of the existing Daytona 1000 to create what now is called the Daytona RS. Chief engineer Angelo Ferrari raised engine compression, fitted stronger pistons and rods, added hotter cams and laid on revised mapping for a new 16-bit engine-management system. What he got was 7 more horsepower, the claimed total now 102 bhp at 8400 rpm.

Ferrari then smoothed out the gearbox, improving shifting and reducing gear noise. Additionally, clutch action now is silky-smooth.

He didn’t stop there. He also specified an all-new chassis based on the geometry of the air-cooled Sport

1100. This consists of essentially the same rectangularsection spine frame, fabricated from chromemoly sheet, but it’s narrower at the rear for increased stiffness, and uses lighter castalloy uprights in place of the old steel swingarm pivots.

Clothing all these improvements is the same bodywork as on the Sport 1100. This means that the riding position is improved from before, with your knees not quite so eager to make friends with the cylinder heads as on previous Daytonas.

The result is a bike with amazingly smooth, usable horsepower, and a high-quality ride thanks to the Daytona’s fully adjustable WP suspension. The Dutch company’s suspension gurus have obviously put in a lot of time getting the setup of the John Wittner-derived parallelogram rear linkage just right. The result is the besthandling and most-satisfying shaft-driven sportbike ever.

The second new model, called the Sport 1100 Iniezione, is much the same as the Daytona RS. but powered by Guzzi's old-style 90-degree, pushrod V-Twin. The big change here is optional fuel injection.

Indeed, the fuel-injected Sport represents such a huge improvement over its carbureted sibling that you’d have

to be crazy or hopelessly cheap to opt for the carbureted version.

What you get from fuel injection is lighter, more precise throttle action, and improved response across the rpm range. What you don’t get is the carbureted Sport’s 1100 massive flat spot. The power curve is far more progressive and power delivery is much cleaner all the way to the 8000-rpm

redline, with claimed peak power of 90 bhp on tap at 7800 rpm, and 70 footpounds of torque available at 6000 rpm.

What Moto Guzzi needed was investment. It got that. And the superb quality of these two new machines indicates just how wisely this financial help has been utilized. Both bikes mark a further stage in the overall refinement of the Guzzi

model lineup, and both suggest that there’s more good stuff to come.

Alan Cathcart