The History of European Motorcycle Companies
The Italians know passion, that's for sure. Having spent the last week in Italy with MV Agusta, I'm more confident that the new company is in good hands, or at least that Claudio Castiglione is fully committed to the marque. Of course, to the extent that he's following in the footsteps of old Count Domenico, he has big shoes to fill.
Now that the Castiglione brothers have largely split their family holdings, with Claudio taking over the motorcycle business, MV presumably has to be a viable motorcycle business and there will have to be a business case made in order for the company to go racing. That was never the case in Domenico's day, when the hugely profitable helicopter factory funded a Grand Prix team with little or no prospect of contributing to the bottom line. That said, the race team wasn't such a wild extravagance it was only staffed with 12-15 people, although they had full access to the helicopter factory's casting and fabricating facilities and staff, so they punched above their weight. I'm sure they contributed to employee morale.
The Count died quite young, in his early 60s in the early 1970s and although the team raced a few more years and the company continued to produce motorcycles for a while under the direction of the Count's younger brother Corrado, he lacked the utter commitment to win at all costs. In hindsight, it's probably just as well that Domenico didn't live to see the premier class taken over by two-strokes, as they were anathema to him.
I've always wondered if there was any truth to the legend that the Count, at the end of each Grand Prix season, ordered his racing department to bury obsolete motorcycles under the MV Agusta helicopter landing pad, so that they would never fall into the hands of his rivals. The helicopter factory is still there of course, but in this age of terrorism and paranoia it's completely off limits (they still make Italian military aircraft) so there was no chance I'd be allowed to prowl around with a metal detector and a shovel.
When I found out I was going to Varese, though, I contacted John Wittner (the "Doctor John" of Guzzi-tuning fame, who seems to know everyone in that part of Italy) and asked him if there was any chance Arturo Magni, who ran MV's race shop in its heyday, was still alive. He'd[ital] know if they really buried the old bikes. Wittner told me that not only was Magni still alive, his son was a mechanical engineer who spoke perfect English and could act as my translator.
In some ways, the DNA of modern sport bikes runs right through Magni, the father. Before WWII, the Rondine 500-four was the dominant roadracing motorcycle. It was water-cooled, with a laydown engine layout and a supercharger. It was designed by Pietro Remor. Although the bike was a winner, the company was less successful and after the war Gilera bought their tooling and patents. It would have continued to be the fastest motorcycle in the world, except that the FIM probably at the insistence of the British passed a rule banning superchargers.
Remor went to Gilera with his motor. Without supercharging, the power-weight optimization changed and he completely redesigned the motor as an upright, air-cooled 500-four. That[ital] motor was the ur-superbike motor. Honda and the rest of the Japanese companies all followed that pattern. And that motor was prototyped, fabricated and assembled by Arturo Magni.
When I reached Giovanni Magni by telephone and explained my reason for wanting to talk to him he immediately invited me to come to his workshop, in the small town of Samarate, a stone's throw from Verghera and the old MV works. He told me his father would be there and was happy to talk. It remained only for me to find the place. I confess that I really had no idea what I'd find, because I really had no idea what Arturo Magni had done after the MV Agusta race shop was mothballed.
I took the train from Varese to Gallarate, then hopped on a local bus and got out when we entered the town of Samarate. I knew the address and didn't think it could be that hard to locate. As I walked along what seemed like the main drag, I saw little machine shop. I figured the proprietor might know Magni and indeed when I asked him for directions to Viale Leonardo da Vinci, he pointed the way and asked, "Magni?"
It was quite a walk, but worth it. The workshop is fenced off, with a small office up front and four or five employees working in the back. There's a big old dog who barks gruffly when you approach the gate and then, when you enter his ears relax, he wags his tail and he approaches with his head low and a look that says, "Hey, I was only doing my job."
Giovanni came out to meet me, and said, "I'll get my father," disappearing back into the workshop for moment and returning with Arturo, who is a quiet-spoken, friendly chap who looks five or ten years younger, at least, than he is.
They gave me a capsule history of their company, which began when MV closed the race shop. Before getting out of the motorcycle business, MV had sold a couple of thousand four-cylinder road bikes (600cc models from 1967-72 and 750S and 750 America versions from '71-77.) These were shaft-drive models that MV had designed expressly to be impossible to convert to into privateer race bikes.
At first, Magni began converting these into sport bikes, which effectively meant punching the motors out to 860cc and installing them in an all-new frame that was larger and heavier than the Grand Prix frame, but similar in design. The most radical part of the conversion was switching them back to chain drive. Arturo told me that the chain drive was not any more efficient power-wise, but that it handled much better, without the shaft-jacking effect under acceleration and the very heavy transfer box at the rear axle.
Those were usually rebadged as MAGNI motorcycles. When the flow of MVs into the workshop slowed to a trickle, the Magnis developed a similar sports chassis powered by a BMW R100 motor. Then BMW introduced the K series and stopped producing R100s. After brief flirtations with1200cc Suzuki motors and even Honda Bol d'Or motors, the Magnis began building specials powered by Moto Guzzi. (Guzzi, like BMW, had by then adopted a parallelogram-style shaft drive that largely eliminated the handling problems that plagued the MV shaft-drive models.)
Nowadays, the workshop is largely devoted to restoration work, either on MV Agustas, or MAGNIs. It's easy to imagine, going back there, that you're in the old MV race shop most of the tools and fixtures date from that period. There's magic in there But nothing prepared me for what I saw on the workbench when they showed me in.
Where was I? Right In the front office of the Magni workshop in Samarate, Italy. Giovanni Magni and his dad Arturo had given me a capsule survey of the motorcycles they'd made since the 70s. I really had no idea what I was going to find in the workshop, since I knew Arturo only as a Gilera GP mechanic in the 50s and as director of the MV Agusta race shop in the 60s. When you think of his riders Duke, Surtees, Hailwood and Agostini it's not like he had to do anything after that for me to want to talk to him. But he did do other stuff.
Through most of Arturo's time at MV Agusta, the company was the fiefdom literally of a genuine Italian Count, Domenico Agusta. After the war MV, like many other firms, filled the demand for small motorcycles; Italy needed cheap, fuel efficient transport on war-ravaged roads. In those early days, some of MV's street bikes were quick and elegant and they inspired the first MV racers. But by the time MV had replaced Gilera as the world's best racing team, Agusta's company was barely in the motorcycle business at all. By then, it had become the largest helicopter maker in Europe. (I think most of their helicopter line was licensed from Bell Helicopters no relation to Bell helmets.)
Looking at the later MV street bikes, it's obvious they were a low priority. But Domenico was fiercely competitive and proud of his Grand Prix team. I suppose it was to justify the racing team (he didn't have shareholders to report to per se[ital], though other family members also had stakes in the company) that he kept a road motorcycle production line going.
After the Count's death in 72, the oldest surviving brother, Corrado, took MV's controls. The team continued racing for a few years but without Domenico's overriding passion, the company began to restrict itself to what we'd now call its "core competency" helicopters. In the mid-70s, either as a last attempt to see if they could grow the motorcycle business back into a profit center or simply in response to consumer demand, they started producing four-cylinder street bikes, first 600s, then 750s.
By producing a four, MV obviously evoked its Grand Prix heyday but the fours were not sporting motorcycles. In this matter, Corrado certainly did exactly what Domenico would have done. You see, Domenico hated the idea of MV Agusta motorcycles falling into the hands of privateers. If memory serves, the company released some small-displacement production racers in the 50s but that trickle stopped in the 60s and few if any of the 350 and 500 racers ever left his possession. Domenico only wanted to win and he insisted on control over the preparation of machines and selection of riders.
(It's interesting to think that the asterisk on Agostini's storied record is that he was on such dominant machinery. If MV had been willing to supply similar equipment to even a few privateers, as Yamaha did in 500GP in the early 90s or as Honda has done in the MotoGP era, Ago may not have been as successful, but that asterisk would be erased. Having added that note I should point out that I believe Ago would have won many races even if the whole field had been on similar machinery.)
So, Corrado insisted that all the street-legal fours be heavy, shaft drive models. This, it was felt would make it impossible for privateers to convert them into race bikes and thus prevent anyone from ever embarrassing MV by racing and doing poorly. In any case, through the mid-70s a couple of thousand of the fours were produced. A drop in the Honda bucket, and a commercial failure. I think the last ones were assembled in '77 and MV motorcycles then disappeared from Grand Prix grids and dealers showrooms.
That left Arturo without a role at MV Agusta. Most of the people who'd bought MV 750S or the later 750 America versions had done so because they were fans of the GP bikes. Arturo set up his own shop the very one I was now in and began modifying customers' street bikes, in order to make them more like the famous racers.
Those first Magnis were real hot rods. The motors were punched out to 861cc and they were fitted with swoopy four-into-four open megaphones that echoed Ago's bikes. The cases were modified to convert the shaft drive to chain. I was surprised to learn from Arturo that this was not done to release power but only to improve handling the primitive shaft mechanism "jacked" the bike under acceleration and the transfer box at the rear hub weighed a ton. "The shaft only absorbed about 1 horsepower more than a chain," he told me, "and in fact if the chain wasn't perfectly maintained the shaft was better for power, but the shocks couldn't handle the [unsprung] weight."
Magni mounted the engine in a completely new frame, which was about thirty pounds lighter as well as much stiffer. (The Magni frame was larger, but conceptually similar, to the frames used on MV's late 500GP bikes. Looking at it, it's still a double cradle in the "Featherbed" tradition, but there's more of a space frame supporting the steering head, and you can see the beginnings of perimeter frames in the cradle tubes are moving towards the edges of the motor.) A long tank and racing seat completed the transformation.
For a while, there was a steady business in such conversions, but obviously it couldn't last forever as there was a limited supply of donor bikes. Magni had a German dealer who convinced him to make a similar bike powered by a BMW R100 motor. (That retained its shaft drive.) That project lasted until BMW (temporarily, as it turned out, though they announced it as permanent) discontinued the production of boxer twin motors in favor of inline "K-series" triples and fours. After that Magni specials were powered by Honda Bol d'Or motors.
Magni learned though, that most of his customers wanted an "all Italian" bike. Not surprisingly, his #1 market was Italy, but the sentiment was the same in his #2 market, Japan. So he started making bikes with Moto Guzzi motors. By then Guzzi had adopted its version of BMW's parallelogram shaft drive and at least part of the handling problem was solved. (Shaft-effect was reduced, although the added weight still made the rear shocks work overtime.) In fact, Magni would still be producing Guzzi-powered specials if Guzzi could fill engine orders. Giovanni told me, "It was fine in the days when deTomaso owned Guzzi. We'd place an order for 200 motors, they'd name a price and a delivery date and on that day, we'd take possession. Afterwards, we'd order 200 and wait and wait, then get 120, and the price would change it was no way to run a business." They made a few cool bikes powered by 1200cc Suzuki motors but again, ran into the problem of customers who really wanted an all-Italian ride.
"So," I asked, "if you're not still making Guzzis, what are you doing?" Giovanni explained that the shop was occupied with a few restorations (of Magnis and of MV Agustas) but created the impression that they'd like to find another supply of motors and build another line of specials. (Note to Claudio Castiglione: Please send a Brutale motor down to Samarate. Let's see what Giovanni and Arturo could build around one of those.)
Then Giovanni brightened. "But come and see what we've been working on lately," he said as he and Arturo got up and led me back into the shop. "It's a 1955 Gilera Grand Prix racer."
I apologize for this narrative moving backward in time here. The Gilera has everything to do with Arturo Magni but predates the MV story told thus far. It turns out that Guido Guarneri, an Italian (now living in Malaga, Spain) had laboriously reproduced every component of a 1954-55 Gilera four-cylinder race bike from a set of original shop drawings.
Before WWII, Ing. Pietro Remor (in Italy engineers get that "Ing." prefix placed before their names the way doctors get "Dr." here) designed the Rondine racer. It was a dominant 500-class motorcycle with a water-cooled, supercharged laydown-four motor.
After the war, Gilera bought the rights to the Rondine motor and brought Remor to their company with his bike. However, when the FIM banned supercharging, the whole power-weight equation changed and Remor recast the motor to sit upright, with air cooling. This was the[ital] GP weapon of its day and one of the most important steps in the evolution of the modern superbike. Geoff Duke was untouchable on it.
That first air-cooled Gilera was assembled by Arturo. So Guarneri figured, if he assembled the first one, he's guy to put all my bits together.
And what bits! Rumor has it Guarneri spent at least a quarter of a million bucks having them fabricated. The bike is beautiful an absolute time warp indistinguishable from the original, even to Arturo. Dell Orto made new carb bodies from dies they hadn't used since placing Remor's original order. But it was a puzzle and after all it had been fifty years since Arturo had last worked on it. Giovanni told me that they worked full time on the build-up for two months. It had just been shaken down in Rimini, at a classic parade, the previous weekend. It was ridden by Remo Venturi, a GP rider from the early 60s. (Note to Sig. Guarneri: Please, please, please let me ride this bike in the Manx Grand Prix. I will buy gas and tires and I promise not to crash, or at least if I crash I promise to die.)
I hadn't had any idea what I was going to find when I came to visit the Magni workshop. To avoid an awkward silence, I thought I should have at least one question prepared for Arturo. My friend Bill Rodgers suggested "Can I become an apprentice?" but there was something I've always wanted to know that Magni could definitely answer.
For decades, legend had it that Count Domenico Agusta buried all the old MV Agusta Grand Prix bikes and prototypes under the MV helicopter factory's landing pad. It came up again as twenty journalists waited for the rain to stop at Misano, during the F4 1000R test. Jeff Buchanan, from the Robb Report, told me, "Yeah, we've published that story at least twice that I know of," but he couldn't recall an original source. So what I wondered was, was it true? Or was it motorcycling's equivalent of an urban myth?
I almost forgot to ask about it, distracted by the Magni history and Guarneri's gorgeous Gilera replica. The atmosphere in the workshop was also kind of distracting. It was cool and shady after the hot, sunny walk to find it. Light filtered in from a few high windows throwing most of the place into shadow. The effect was that I had to walk right up to things and wait for my eyes to adjust, in order to figure out what I was looking at.
On the walls hung tools, jigs and patterns. I knew that many of these dated from the original MV days and it was easy to imagine that the big wrench I was looking at had been used to tighten down Mike Hailwood's steering damper in 1965.
MV ruled the 500 class back then. Honda desperately wanted to win it. Honda definitely had the motor for it, but its chassis handled poorly. Moreover, the Japanese company's racing resources were stretched thin by its first foray into Formula One car racing. So rather than design an all new frame that would allow their motor to put power to the ground, Honda poached Mike Hailwood.
Obviously, Mike had extraordinary skill and a winning record. But more than that, Honda hired him because he wasn't a complainer. Mike would ride the wheels off anything that he was given. Paradoxically, it was his own smoothness as a rider that allowed him to control motorcycles that shook and wobbled uncontrollably beneath mere mortals.
In The Art of Motorcycle Racing (now sadly long out of print) he wrote, "Although it may be difficult to achieve, every rider should try, as tidiness conserves effort. Endeavor, therefore, to develop a smooth and unobtrusive style. Aim to blend your hand, foot, and body movements into a smooth rhythm and avoid wrenching, tugging, or stamping at the controls. Violent movements achieve noting, look flashy, and tire you out." Man, that's still good advice.
Having already won the championship for MV Agusta in '65, Mike was able to negotiate his release to ride Honda's 500 for the first time at the 1965 Japanese GP. "To put it mildly," he wrote, "I have ridden machines with better handling characteristics The engine, like all Honda motors, is a flier however."
Having lost the services of Hailwood, the Count promoted Giacomo Agostini to the position of senior rider. Ago had spent the '65 season as Mike's understudy, observing his style and learning his approach to each circuit. So, the stage was set for the '66 and '67 seasons, which many still feel were the greatest ever.
In '66, Mike won three 500 GP races. Combined with Jim Redman's results, they garnerned the FIM's Manufacturer's Trophy for Honda. But everyone knew it was the individual championship that counted. Ago won that. It may have been a small consolation that Mike won the 250 and 350cc titles.
In '67 Mike won five 500cc Grands Prix but again, Ago won the championship. Nobby Clark (Mike's mechanic) said of those years, "it was Mike winning the races, not the bike," which is a hell of a thing for a mechanic to admit. For once, even Mike wasn't making it look easy. He finished races with his hands blistered and bloody. At the end of the year, Honda withdrew from Grands Prix in frustration.
Ago (though great) didn't have Mike's raw talent. What he had on his side was, he was a methodical test rider and a master of set-up. He also had Arturo Magni on his side. As I walked around the shop I wondered which of the tools I was looking at had been used to tweak Ago's bikes and keep them just ahead of Hailwood's screaming Hondas.
The Count had a reputation for what, nowadays, we'd call "micromanagement." I wondered if it had been frustrating for Arturo he'd been under constant pressure to develop new parts, but even the tiniest change had to be approved by Domenico himself. When I asked him about it, Arturo was emphatic in saying that the Count had never been a problem.
"Was he an engineer?" I asked, "Or a mechanic?.."
"No, no," Arturo said. But then he added, "But he had very good instincts. He used to tell us to try something and we'd think, What's he on about?' but then it would work. One day he summoned me and said, Make a 500 triple!' and sure enough it was very competitive."
I experienced a sort of cognitive dissonance when Arturo recalled the Count. What I'd expected was a roll of the eyes and an answer like, "Oh, he was a #+ing tyrant, but we respected him." You see, everything that I'd read about the Count made him seem like an imperious egomaniac. But there I was with Arturo himself a very gentle, polite, "old world" sort and his body language and tone of voice made it clear that he was recalling a friend, not just an employer. That's why I need to learn history by meeting the people who lived it.
Before leaving, I remembered to ask about the buried bikes. "Oh yes," Arturo said, "in racing nothing is sacred but everything is secret. Back then, there was always construction going on at the helicopter factory. The Count would order us to bury the bikes in places where he knew some assembly plant was about to expand, so it would not only be buried but soon it would be covered in concrete."
I asked how many bikes he'd seen buried that way and he thought for a moment. "A lot," he shrugged and shook his head. "50 at least. Maybe even a hundred." As I was packing up my camera and recording iPod I asked if they could show me where those factory buildings were. "Oh, you can't take pictures, it's all military now," Giovanni said, "If you even take a picture of the gate the Carabinieri will come and question you." So, I set out to walk back to the bus stop.
After walking a few minutes I was watching a helicopter hover over the factory in Verghera, just a couple of miles away a white race van pulled to a stop beside me. It was Giovanni. "I don't think the buses are running at this time of day," he said. "Where can I take you." I was exhausted and grateful for a ride to the train station. As he drove, I asked him about being a kid, and whether his dad had taken him to the races. "Not often," he said, "there was always too much going on during the race weekends. But I did come to a few of the races that took place in Italy." Was the Count at the races, I wondered, or was he like Enzo Ferrari, too nervous to attend? "No he was always there, with a stopwatch and a clipboard."
I told him that I'd been a bit surprised to get the impression that his dad had liked the Count, and wondered about Arturo's reaction to the Count's death. "He was shattered," recalled the son. "Domenico had been his best friend. They'd worked so closely for over 20 years." Then he stopped in front of the Gallarate railway station, we bid each other good bye. On the train back to Varese, I decided that even though I was still fighting the mother of all colds and felt like crap, it would be crazy to leave Italy without having one more great meal.
Just down the street from my hotel there was a suitable place, called Locanda Garibaldi. It's a measure of how sick I felt and how much I wanted to treat myself that I passed up sitting in the front (sort of a bar) where two very attractive women were eating pizza, to sit in the formal dining room in the back. I told the waiter, "Have the chef prepare me the best meal he can, of his choice." I have almost as many pages of notes about that meal as I do about the motorcycles.
One course was "coniglio alla San Ramese" rabbit. When the chef came out to see how I was doing I asked him what was in the sauce. "Olives, red wine, thyme, nuts, and uh" At a loss for the word he gestured to the small of his back. I suggested kidneys. "Yes," he said, adding without irony, "and a lot of love, of course." Damn. Why can't we all be Italian?
