MAGNI MV AGUSTA FILOROSSO
ROAD TEST
P78
ANCIENT MEETS MODERN
The hand built Magni
MV Agusta Filorosso is
a retro race bike that
actually works.
You might not be able to simply drive down to your
local dealer and pick up one of these gems, but the
Magni MV Agusta Filorosso is out there and maybe
worth whatever it takes to get one.
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEL EDGE
O
ne problem with modern
day retro bikes is that
in trying to combine
ancient with modern, they often
risk embracing the worst of both
worlds, and the best of neither.
In trying to recreate all our
yesterdays in a modern context,
their builders sometimes end
up with too much motor for the
chassis, or insufficient poke to
pull the skin off a rice pudding.
Better to just stick the result on
display and simply look at it,
reflecting as you do how far and
how fast the world has moved on
since the bike it's trying to honor
first did its thing.
But then every so often one
comes along that is so totally
right, and so luscious to look at
as well as fun to ride, that you
forget all the times you've been
disappointed, and start looking
at yesterday through distinctly
rose-tinted spectacles. For sure
that's the case with Italy's Magni
MV Agusta Filorosso triple that's
now being handbuilt in limited
quantities—sufficient nonethe-
less to constitute series produc-
tion—by Giovanni Magni in the
Moto Magni factory north of Mi-
lan at Samarate. That's a stone's
throw from MV's former race
HQ at Gallarate where his late
dad Arturo, who passed away
last December at the age of 90,
led the historic Italian trophy
marque's GP team, bankrolled
