For any Italophilic sport rider, there are few marques than can equal the beauty and desirability offered by the motorcycles produced by
Bimota. Starting with their fortuitous decision to start building bikes instead of HVAC equipment in 1972, Bimota has earned its reputation producing some of the most delectable two-wheeled exotica in the world by assembling world-class sport machines around proven, bought-in powertrains. They are one of the few companies that can consistently take top-shelf engines from already capable machines and then make those donor bikes look staid, slow and boring in comparison to what the folks in Rimini have been slapping together in their laughably tiny "factory" since the Nixon administration.
The DB3 Mantra is not one of those machines. Nor was it ever intended to be. The Mantra represents one of Bimota's bigger missteps, an attempt to crack into a wider market that failed to win over many fans. It was expensive and saddled with some of the most controversial styling ever put into production. It was also one of the most useable real-world street bikes ever produced by the company, a fact lost in the unending stream of negative commentary that has dogged the Mantra since it was unveiled in 1994.
