P112
CN
III LOWSIDE
BY RENNIE SCAYSBROOK
T
he EICMA Show in Milan is
always an eagerly anticipat-
ed time at the Cycle News
office. EICMA is the big one, the
show every manufacturer puts
the most effort into, and the one
they all want good publicity from.
It's interesting to note how
much the European manufactur-
ers kick butt in Milan. EICMA
has almost become a showcase
for Euro forward-thinking and
Japanese cowering, a case in
point being the resurgent MV
Agusta and the downbeat, almost
heartbreaking Yamaha.
MV Agusta has endured the
kind of repeated financial hard-
ship, drama and near fatality that
could only come from Italy. Un-
der the ownership of the Claudio
Castiglioni's son, Giovanni, the
famous Italian manufacturer from
the banks of the stunning Lake
Como in Northern Italy came out
swinging at this year's EICMA,
releasing two all-new models, the
limited-edition Brutale 1000 Serie
Oro and the stunning prototype
Superveloce 800, a rolling
tribute to the machines piloted by
the great Giacomo Agostini in the
1960s.
The Brutale was so popular it
won the Most Beautiful Motor-
cycle of EICMA Award, the first
time in many years Italian archri-
val Ducati hasn't taken the gong.
MV is a company that can't hold
a candle to Ducati in terms of
sales numbers, especially given
MV's horrid recent past here
in the States, however, I can't
help but root for the underdog
because the MV Agusta name
is an extremely important one to
world motorcycling, regardless of
the number of titles won or how
many Lewis Hamilton specials it
churns out.
The buzz around MV Agusta at
EICMA was contradictory to the
glum feelings leveled at Yamaha,
a motorcycle manufacturer many
times the size of MV. After an
exhaustive marketing campaign
where Yamaha legends past and
present paraded this new ma-
chine around the world in every
area except North America, to
HIGH AND LOWS AT EICMA 2018
Motorcycle art
took on a new
level at EICMA
with the MV
Agusta Super-
veloce 800.
