Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE I f you peruse the MotoGP record books, you'll find Morbidelli won four Motorcycle Grand Prix World Championships—six, if you include the two titles won by Morbidelli spinoff MBA—including winning two class titles in the same season. I assumed that Morbidelli must have been one of the dozens of motorcy- cle or scooter manufacturers in Italy during the 1960s and '70s, but I was wrong. Turns out that during its rac- ing heyday of the 1970s, Morbidelli didn't mass produce street bikes or scooters, in fact the entire operation was run out of the back of a wood- working machine shop by three and sometimes four people! That's right, this tiny Italian cottage shop, met face to face on the track against some of the largest motor- cycle manufacturers in the world and came out on top, not once but four times! In all, Morbidelli scored a total of 35 wins in GP competition (30 in the 125cc class and five in the 250cc class). It truly is one of the most remarkable David vs. Goliath stories in GP history. Giancarlo Morbidelli, like many Ital- ians of his generation, grew up loving motorcycles. Born in 1938, Mor- bidelli's teen years, the 1950s, was a brilliant period for Italian motorcycle racing. From a young age Giancarlo was constantly tinkering on motorcy- cles and scooters in a quest to make them faster and more reliable. During the 1960s, Morbidelli built P110 MORBIDELLI: THE ULTIMATE DAVID VS GOLIATH valve single. The little Morbidelli made its world championship debut in '69 with Ringhini and Eugenio Lazzarini riding. Lazzarini scored Morbidelli's first world championship points when he finished 10 th in the 50cc class at the Dutch TT. A couple of rounds later at the Sachsenring, both Lazzarini (6 th ) and Ringhini (10 th ) scored points. Not bad for a first-year bike produced out of the back of a woodworking machine shop. 1969 would mark the first of 14 seasons that would see Morbidelli machines entered in Grand Prix com- petition. In 1970, in addition to the 50cc class, Morbidelli moved up to the 125cc class with a two-cylinder design. a thriving woodworking machinery company which exists to this day. By the end of the 1960s his machin- ery company put Morbidelli into a situation that allowed him to further indulge his passion for motorcycle racing. In 1968 Morbidelli built and tuned machines for Luciano Mele, which earned Mele the Italian Junior Championship. Bolstered by his success, Morbidelli decided to take his involvement to the next level and build a racing motorcycle of his own design. He hired racer and go-kart racing engine designer Franco Ringhini to run a race shop in a small section of Morbidelli's woodworking machinery plant. The first Morbidelli racer pro- duced was 50cc machine in 1969. It was state-of-the-art six-speed, water-cooled, two-stroke, rotary- Giancarlo Morbidelli guided a four-man operation into building GP world beaters in the 1970s. PHOTO: ALAN CATHCART