Zanè Laverda 650/668/750 Twins – The Other, Other Italian Middleweight

Laverda 750 S Formula

The vaunted Laverda marque needs little introduction. But I suppose we need to address why a whole series of production Laverdas would warrant an OddBike profile here on Bike-urious. Laverda has long been a fond topic of mine (see my exclusive V6 history on Silodrome.com) and the company has a long and proud history of producing fine Italian sporting machines, Odd or not.

Laverda 650 Sport

There is, however, an entire generation of Laverdas that has been largely forgotten in recent decades: those produced at the Zanè factory through the 1990s. It is time to rectify that and introduce you to the last, and perhaps best, Laverdas that preceded the marque’s descent into irrelevance as a zombie brand punted into a dark corner of the Piaggio Group’s closet.

(Incidentally, for some first-hand experience with building and racing Laverdas during their golden era of the 1970s, I highly recommend you watch my conversation with Kenny Austin on the OddBike YouTube channel. Kenny’s first Laverda was a 750 SFC, to give you an idea of his fascinating history.)

Laverda 750 Super Sport

To understand the Zanè era of Laverda we need to go back to the late 1970s, to the tail end of the Breganze factory’s heyday. Following the success of Laverda’s 650/750 parallel twins and 1000 triples, a new, modern, mid-displacement twin was developed to offer a lighter, more nimble machine in the lucrative middleweight category.

READ THE REST ON BIKE-URIOUS.COM

Laverda 750 Super Sport

Interesting Links:
Zane Laverda Photo Gallery
Laverda V6 History on Silodrome.com
Kenny Austin interview on OddBike YouTube
Tuning Weber-Marelli Fuel Injection on OddBike YouTube
Moto-Guzzi MGS-01 on OddBike
Laverda 668 technical/service information
Bought on Bike-urious: Laverda 750S Caraneta Part I 
Bought on Bike-urious: Laverda 750S Caraneta Part II
Sport Rider review of the 650 Ghost
BreganZane.com

Laverda 750 S Formula II

Laverda 750 Brochure

Wait... WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

Morbidelli 850 V8 - Eight Cylinder Exotica on Bike-urious.com

Thanks to Abhi over at Bike-urious.com for sponsoring this post! Be sure to follow his site for daily doses of weird and wonderful motorcycles.

There are two factors in the motorcycle industry that can and usually will doom any bike from the beginning:

1. An extremely high price tag.
2. Styling courtesy of an automotive design house.

The subject of today's profile applied both of these deadly sins to their full effect. It was certified by Guinness as the most expensive motorcycle of all time. And it was declared the ugliest motorcycle of all time by anyone who had the misfortune to gaze upon the bodywork penned by Pininfarina.

This is the Morbidelli 850 V8. Technologically fascinating and produced by a company that should have had no right to build an eight-cylinder grand touring machine, it was an ambitious attempt to break into what has traditionally been the black hole of motorcycle genres: the boutique luxury motorcycle.

Read the rest at Bike-urious.com!

Interesting Links:
Morbidelli Museum Website
Ultimate Motorcycling on the only privately-owned Morbidelli V8
Giancarlo Morbidelli and his museum
Morbidelli - A Story of Men and Fast Motorcycles 2014 documentary
Morbidelli V12 Project
Morbidelli V12 on the Kneeslider
Press on financial trouble at the Morbidelli Museum
OddBike Morbidelli Gallery
Phil Aynsley gallery of the Morbidelli Museum and the V12 project

Mondial Piega - Honouring the Favour

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Take a long-dormant name, add a proven heart, clothe it in Italian design, surround it with high hopes, then end the whole project with crushed expectations, insolvency and some ancillary criminal escapades. It is the classic story of the failed motorcycle company, a trope that gets repeated over and over every few years when someone seeks to play on nostalgia and resurrect some long-dead company to sell vapourware to unsuspecting enthusiasts... Except this story is a bit more interesting and a bit more nuanced, and the revival came that much closer to succeeding. This is the story of the Mondial Piega, a machine that was set to conquer the superbike market through an unprecedented partnership that had its roots in a simple gesture of good sportsmanship that occurred over 50 years ago.

Hunwick Hallam / Hunwick Harrop - Aussie Innovation

Photo Courtesy Richard James

There has been a remarkable amount of innovation in motorcycle design that has come from Down Under. Australian and New Zealander designers and tinkerers seem to have a particular penchant for crafting some of the most interesting and forward-thinking machines the world has seen, all in isolation from the existing networks. These clever displays of ingenuity often seem driven by a variety of factors – perhaps it is their distance from existing industries, or their down-home ingenuity brought on by that isolation from the rest of the world, and more than likely it is their strong fondness for all things loud and fast. One company came to the fore in the late 90s with the promise of putting an Australian-made motorcycle on the world stage, with a radical clean-sheet design that made the rest of the industry take notice. The Hunwick Hallam almost single-handedly kickstarted an Australian motorcycle industry that would have dusted the competition the road and the track, but the realities of the market would doom it to obscurity.

Yamaha GTS 1000 - The Future is Forkless

If you've spent any amount of time here on OddBike, you’ll be aware that I tend to favour independent thought and unique approaches to the design and construction of motorcycles. The mandate for this site, such as it is, is to profile rare and unusual machines – with a particular eye towards unique technical qualities.

One element I have touched upon in the past is the proliferation of unique front suspension designs that are arguably superior to the “traditional” telescopic fork. There are a few brave engineers, designers and inventors who have dared to question the hegemony of the fork and propose a better solution. One of the most prominent, and perhaps the most misunderstood, is James Parker. Parker was one of the first inventors to achieve what many backyard tinkerers only dream of – to have his design adopted by a major manufacturer and put into mass production. His efforts are thus one of the best-known contributions to alternative front suspension design. Unfortunately Parker learned the hard way that the difference between conception and production can be significant, and that the design process within a major manufacturer is far from straightforward.

Read the rest on Silodrome.com

Voxan - Café (Racer) Français

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When you think of big sporting V-twins and café-styled roadsters, what do you picture? Italy and Great Britain maybe - well-groomed Latin men astride thundering sports machines or perhaps greasy-haired rockers congregating outside a bar.

It’s unlikely you’d imagine Issoire, a quaint town filled with medieval architecture situated in the heart of France.

Norton P86 750 Challenge - Norton's Last Gasp

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When we think of the death of the British motorcycle industry in the 1970s, we generally recall the final generation of cantankerous, leaky, vibrating, old fashioned crock-pots being foisted onto an increasingly apathetic market. These were conservative and under-engineered machines that harkened back to an earlier era of motorcycle design (and lax quality control). With the advent of oil tight, reliable, well built, and fine-riding Japanese motorcycles (with – gasp – electric starters), the writing was on the wall for most of the British marques. Some made a last-ditch attempt to stave off failure by hurriedly cobbling together something that might be competitive against the Japanese onslaught.

Amazonas 1600 - Beetle Powered Brazilian Behemoth

It's Christmas Eve, and for today's post I present you with a massive turkey. Happy Holidays!

A wisened old git by the name of Dave, who was a passionate lifelong motorcyclist and successful vintage racer, once told me “There are no bad motorcycles. Just some that are better than others”. I’m quite certain old Dave never swung a leg over the 900-pound Beetle-powered behemoth from Brazil known as the Amazonas 1600, considered one of the best worst motorcycles in modern history.

V-Roehr 1130/1250 - The Other, Other American V-Twin Motorcycle

It has an American-made V-Twin (an honest-to-god Harley motor, no less), an advanced chassis, top shelf components, and a distinctly sporty bent, with stunning performance that is far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s built by a clever American engineer working independently to apply his own ideas towards building the ultimate American made sport bike, powered by an apple-pie and Budweiser fuelled motor.

And it isn’t a Buell.

Van Veen OCR 1000 - Dutch Wankel Powered Superbike

Over the years the Wankel rotary engine has been, paradoxically, the best and worst alternative to the good ol’ gasoline burning, reciprocating piston engine. Felix Wankel’s concept has shown great promise since its introduction in the 1950s and it has found its way into a wide variety of vehicles. All of which have ended up as, at best, curiosities. Which brings us to the Dutch Van Veen OCR-1000 double-rotor superbike, which is likely one of the best rotary-powered motorcycles, and certainly one of the rarest.

Harley Davidson VR1000 - Thundering American Misfit

This article has been heavily revised to incorporate new information, and can now be found here:

Harley-Davidson VR1000 - "God's own voice."

Apologies for the dead link. - JC

Bimota V-Due 500 - The Bike That Killed Bimota

In 1996-97, Bimota was set to introduce a new machine that would revolutionize sport bikes. It would be an unstoppable, razor sharp 500cc two-stroke that would give 1000cc four strokes a run for their money, in a time when it appeared that two-strokes were on their way to the boneyard. There was a lot of excitement brewing around the forthcoming V-Due (literally, V-twin) - not only because of the mouth-watering specs and the fact it was being built by one of motorcycling's most legendary boutique marques, but also because it promised to fix the "problem" that two stroke road bikes were facing.