Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·VINTAGE.·. Inside Team Obsolete for it, and if you're willing t . a night and bite your fingernails and have your eyeballs as big as saucers at 3 a.m., that's the price you've got to pay. I guess that I've done that my whole life because I've always lived on the edge." What Iannucci ultimately credits the success of his operation to is the goodwill he's been able to foster over the years. "Probably more than anything else, Team Obsolete is a triumph of networking. We have people all over the world who have helped us out, they're our friends." And they help in immeasurable ways, with logistics, hotel reservations, the use of a car in a foreign land:' (Above) Nobby Clark tInkers with the 250cc ".-cyllnder Honda • Team Obsolete's most prized poesesslon. (Left) The MY Agu_ now resides In team's BrooIdyn, New York, hlllldquartsrs. The Benelli 350 which KeI Canuthers raced early in 1970, the season after he won the 250cc titJe on a llenel1i 2SO four, rests near the door after its return &om Assen where it had to be pulled from the Parade of Champioos. It made a little noise in the bottom eml and we slIut it off. That happens. These exotic bikes are like a very th0roughbred race horse - it's a very, very single-purpoee thing. They weren't designed for privateers, they were designed to finish one race. And as long all they fiaUsbecI that race they aCClOlllplished what tIIey were designed to do. PaiDted OIl the tail section is file Ide EeIIzo PaIoIiDfs "'It WOIIId haft Ilem . . . . . lIlld (PIaiI) ReId Ca&Ji:utIleni; I pat PIldiai' _ it Ile:_. he . . 'tJie oat 01 .... N There is a never-ending quest for the Holy Grail, as Iannucci puts it, and the acquisition of the MY Agusta race bikes, after five years of litigation, both in the U.S. and Italy, has to rank as one of his crowning glories. '1' m never fully satisfied. I think that's probably my strength and my weakness. When we got the MY deal there were other people in the world who actually bid a lot more money than we did, and they sold it to us. And they did it because of our racing history and because of what they thought we would do with them, which is exactly what we have done with them. And so that's kind of my mission in life - to let people see the things and appreciate them and understand the history of the sport, and maybe it even gives ideas for the future of the sport." Iannucci began working the phones to Gruppo Agusta in 1981 after seeing a blurb in a magazine - and in 1986 they were ready to sell. When all of the legal work was completed in 1993, Iannucci ended up with 20 motorcycles and several racks of spare parts which, he said, Roper has broken the code on. A tour of the dark and cluttered shop is like a walk through time. Hanging from the rafters are fairings from Gene Romero's factory Triumph, Dick Mann's factory B5A, and a seat section from a Harley road racer ridden by Scott Brelsford sits' atop a parts wall. There are frames and wheels and tires and gas tanks and walls and walls of parts, all immaculately labeled. Iannucci pulls a bearing support for a timing gear on the MV triple out of a box and admires it. "I've never seen parts as beautifully machined as they are on the MVs. These are the Holy Grail, the triples. Really, the hiStory of the triple is the history of Agostini because the triple was built for him and he was the primary rider during the era of the triple. It's a lovely machine, it's smaIl, it's nimble, it's tidy. It's completely built around Agostini's riding style. A bigger rider is going to have a difficult time with it:' He has since acquired an even more valuable piece, the Honda 250 six-cylinder which Jim Redman won the 1963 World Championship. ("That thing represents 20 motorcycles or more that I had to sell to pay for it. I cashed in a lot of stock to buy that bike," Iannucci said.) And, between the MVs and the Honda, Iannucci has shifted the focus of liitoperation from racing to exhibitions. "The stuff is only alive when people interact with it," Iannucci says. And the people he's had to interact with it comprise a Hall of Fame crew - Giacomo Agostini, Jim Redman, Phil Read, Kel Carruthers, Luigi Taveri, Franco Bonera, Mick Grant, Gary Nixon, Dave Aldana, Dick Mann, and Yvon DuHamel have all ridden Team Obsolete tackle. "This machinery was meant to have the best riders in the world on it. To the extent that we can recreate that, even if its just a little glimpse of the past, putting an old rider on it who accomplished great things with it as a young man and seeing the look on his face and seeing the look on the faces of the crowd - that, to me, really is what it's all about:' l:N

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