Moto Guzzi MGS-01 - Cooking Goose

Image Source

Booming Italian twin-cylinder trackday terrors have generally been the specialty of Ducati over the last 30 years; you might picture the odd orange Laverda parallel twin thrown in when that company is flirting with solvency, but generally Ducati is the go-to Latin track machine. Rarely do you picture a big, air-cooled, transverse V-twin out of Mandello de Lario thundering out of a corner and scything past the opposition. Moto Guzzi generally presents an air of staunch traditionalism, a sort of Italian BMW that is somehow more passionate than the Munich brand but far more rational than the exuberant offerings from Bologna. Guzzi riders are weathered, skilled old men who thump along the backroads, do their own repairs, and generally abstain from high-speed shenanigans. Or at least that’s the stereotype, one that was briefly blown into the weeds by the spectacularly uncharacteristic MGS-01 Corsa.

Vyrus Motorcycles - Hub-Centre Perfection

Image Source
Last week we featured the FFE 350, a heavily modified forkless Yamaha RZ350 built by engineering virtuoso Julian Farnham. In keeping with a forkless-front-end theme, this week we will be profiling the most exotic and advanced hub-centre steering designs of all time – the Vyrus.

If you want to re-invent the proverbial wheel in the motorcycle industry, it seems that the most popular place to start is the front suspension. Dozens of companies have fielded hundreds of prototypes and the odd production model that eschews the conventional telescopic fork for something more effective. It seems that every few years an iconoclastic design emerges to tip the motorcycle world on its head and correct the flaws of the traditional fork. One of the most striking (and difficult to execute) alternative suspensions is the hub-centre steered front wheel, and the undisputed current king of the hub-centre design is Vyrus, based in Coriano, Italy.

Yamaha A-N-D FFE 350 - Forkless Two-Smoker

Image Source

As far as motorcycle design goes, manufacturers tend to err on the side of conservative engineering. Stick with what is known, what is common, what is produced in great quantity and with known characteristics. This is especially true in suspension design. With the current proliferation of so-called “conventional” telescopic forks, it’s quite easy to forget that there are hundreds of alternative front suspension designs, many of which address the key weaknesses of traditional forks with distinct performance advantages.

The Irving-Vincent - Anachronistic Trackday Missile

Image Source
The Irving-Vincent

Let’s say you are the head of a successful engineering firm in Australia. You have a full compliment of advanced casting, prototyping and milling machinery at your disposal and years of R&D experience in various avenues. And you happen to be passionate about motorcycles.