Ago Rides Again!
Ago Rides Again!
Fifteen-time World Champion Giacomo Agostini tests the new MV Agusta F4
LUIGI BIANCHI
MARCO RICCARDI
IT LIVES! SKEPTICS, TAKE IT ALL BACK: THE MV Agusta F4 not only exists, it works, and its beautiful voice sounds different from that of all other four-cylinder motorcycles. The wonderful 750, queen of last year's Milan Show, is a reality, with production of the first 200 machines scheduled to start just after summer.
To celebrate this fact, parent company Cagiva and Italy's Motociclismo magazine invited leg endary I 5-time World Champion Giacomo Agostini to be the first "civilian" to ride the new MV. And what better location than Vergiate, home of Gruppo Agusta's helicopter-manufac turing plant?
Ever the gentleman, Agostini rose to the occa sion. "I was really happy to have this privilege, and to finally dispel the doubts of those who feared this motorcycle was so beautiful that it would remain an unrealizable dream," he said. `~Instead, the MV F4 is here, complete and work ing. And it is a beautiful motorcycle."
Indeed. The bike is beautiful-we cannot say that enough-and this impression extends to its individual parts. Above all, the incredible shape of the swingarm stands out. it is a modern sculp ture, rather than a one-piece casting, and weighs just 8 pounds. The frame-or what is visible of it under the streamlining-is equally lovely, com prising a unique blend of steel tubes and alloy castings. Even such seemingly trivial compo nents as the brake and clutch levers have been lovingly crafted, With respect to the motorcycle that toured the show circuit, only the wheels of "our" MV were different; in place of the special, star-shaped ones were standard Marchesinis made for a Ducati 916.
If Massimo Tamburini is responsible for the MV's beautiful lines, the father of the engine is ingegnere Andrea (ioggi. Thirty-four years old, and with Cagiva since 1988, Goggi, is enthusiastic about his first four-cylin der, but carefully guards its secrets: "Wait until it is on sale, and then I will tell you everything," he said.
Goggi was, however, willing to speak about the genesis of this very Italian four-cylinder. "It was born at the beginning of 1996, and it was born very healthy," he declared. "It does not have anything to do with the proto types produced by Ferrari, models with backward heads and the injectors in front. From the first prototype, which still had the Cagiva name on the sump, we reached the present version.
"The most difficult part of this pro ject was making the engine easy to build for large-scale production," Goggi continued. "Building 200-250 engines with sand-cast sumps, like the ones we will build for the first series, is not an easy task. Even more difficult is to design it so that thousands of units can be mass-pro duced. We remade the external parts, the head in particular, to make it easier to assemble. The intake and exhaust ports are now raw from the casting, but we were able to maintain good gas flow.
"We also worked on the transmission, always with the aim of decreasing width. We never touched the general scheme, with the alternator in the back and the central camchain. We chose this configuration because Tamburini needed an extremely narrow engine in order to minimize the dimensions of the frame. Certainly, with this configuration we have more mechan ical losses and more noise than we would have with the camchain located on the end of the
As far as performance is concerned, Goggi is quite pleased with his progress. "We saw 130 horsepower at 12,400 rpm on the test bench, but we can go higher with no effort," he said. "We are also extremely happy about its reliability. We have an engine that already has reached 46,000 kilometers (approxi mately 28,500 miles) on the prototype camouflaged as a Ducati 916."
There was no such camouflage adorning the MV when Giacomo Agostini pulled on his trademark redwhite-and-green helmet and set out for his test ride. The fact that this motorcy cle is so beautiful, and even more exciting in its natural environment, is a reality that can be conveyed only by those who were privileged to be pre sent at its unveiling. The sound of the four-cylinder engine-almost the sound of four organ pipes-is an emotional experience that cannot be put into words, but has to be experienced inside, almost in a visceral way.
Returning from his brief outing, Ago had high praise for the four-cylinder's performance. "The engine has such elasticity that if you let it go down to the minimum in first gear and then accelerate all of a sudden, you really don't need the clutch. Engine power rises progressively until you engage the rev-limiter at 13,000 rpm. It has very smooth operation, without the sensation that the motor is `pulling back,' as hap pens with other motorcycles. I was also able to appreciate the six-speed trans mission. In the beginning, I thought that the ratios were rather short, but they are absolutely normal. In sum, I really did not expect to find the engine at such an advanced stage of development. "As for the rest, of course, I'd need to ride it more, but the chassis seems fine, too, with a front end that manages to be light and stable at the same time.
"I really think the F4 will change the reference mark among sport motorcy cles," Ago concluded. "Indeed, no other motorcycle today has such a mix of style, technology and tradition. It is not by chance that we came back to MV Agusta's own test track for this first taste of the F4."
