Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

INTERVIEW enelli is back. A decade after production of motorcycles bearing one of Italy's most historic two-wheeled names finally ceased, the firm based in the Adriatic Coast town of Pesaro has hit the comeback trail. Like Laverda, another formerly famiIy-owned company well on the road to recovery - under the guiding hand of wealthy industrialist Francesco Tognon - now Benelli too has been acquired by an enthusiastic but hard-headed corporate high-flier, who plans to use the millions he's made in a quite different industry to bankroll the rebirth of a historic Italian marque. Even by the standards of a bike-mad country like Italy, though, 29-year-old Andrea Merloni is a different breed of bean-counter. His family's giant, privately owned Gruppo Merloni industrial empire is one of Europe's largest domestic appliance manufacturers, concentrating on goods like washing machines and refrigerators under the Indesit and Ariston brands. His father, Vittorio, is a former president of the Italian business federation Confindustria, as well as an ex-government minister. Once a successful motocros er and road racer himself, but nowadays best It's a mark of the drive and enthusiasm of the 20 or so men that Merloni recruited to get the new company up and running - as well as his own capacity to get things done and meet a strict, self-imposed time schedule - that exactly a year later the first new Benelli twowheeler was launched in the marketplace, the 491 scooter. In a slick show-biz introduction in Pesaro on January 31, the aggressively styled, sporty - and by the standards of the scooter market - innovatively-engineered 491 was paraded to show the populace that Benelli is back in business. With production beginning six weeks later in a new, purpose-built factory on the outskirts of town, Merloni's R&D team headed by FIM World Superbike technical inspector Fabio Fazi (also famous as the creator of Max Biaggi's world-speed-record-holding electric bike Violent Violet) had achieved miracles by designing, building and testing a range of three versions of the 491, powered by crankcase reed-valve 49cc Minarelli engines, and bringing them to a production-ready state, all in the space of less than 12 months - roughly half the time normally required even in the scooter world for a ground-zero operation such as this. But so what? Doesn't the understandable decision to take a crack at the tige. And because it's from Pesaro in the Marche region of Italy, close to Fabbriano where my family comes from. For us, it's a question of emotion as well as business, cuore as well as cash. When the two go together, it's a perfect marriage. Are you the sole owner of the new Benelli company? 0, but Gruppo Merloni owns 55 percent of Benelli, with the other 45 percent split between five other shareholders. One is Giancario Selci who retaihs 10 percent. There are three other private investors each also with 10 percent, and Marche Capital, a local venture-capital organization, has 5 percent. Therefore the main responsibility to make this company successful is mine. You've come a long way in U months. What is the present state of the Benelli company and its operating structure? We have a new purpose-built factory covering 3000 square meters (32,300 square feet), but with the room to double that within a couple of years if needed. We're starting up production in March with a workforce of 50, but this doesn't include the R&D and productdevelopment staff headed up by Ricardo Rosa. Benelli has been created as a light, . slim-line, modern and fully computerized company, able to respond very The challenge )Ne have set ourselves is to create an entire range of twowheeled vehicles over a short period of time, with the intention of gaining a substantial share of the entire European motorcycle market by the year 2000. We plan to produce 10,000 scooters in 1997, selling them at first only in Italy, Germany and France, which together account for 80 percent of European scooter sales. But within four years, our target is to have 5 percent of the total market, meaning 50,000 units by the year 2000. So, again like Aprilia, do you then intend to use the profits generated by volume production of scooters to underpin the development of a range of four-stroke motorcycles, especially, ~ay, a big-bore Benelli superbike? The answer is yes - we're working on it. We have no firm date to restart motorcycle production, because first we must be successful with the scooters, which .will provide the cash flow and profits necessary to underwrite development of a range of Benelli motorcycles. But for sure we are studying the way in which we can begin to sell something with bigger wheels - and more cylinders! - than a SOcc scooter. However, it's too early to be more known as the owner of Team Gattalone (for which Pier-Francesco Chili became the only privateer to win World Superbike rounds in 1995 and '96, defeating the works Honda and Ducati teams on his Pietro Gianesin-tuned 916), Andrea Merloni has taken over from Promotor the second of the two works Ducati Superbike teams in 1997 - a year that also sees him start down the path toward becoming a motorcycle manufacturer in his own right. Acquiring the Benelli name as a prelude to developing his own Superbike contender is a doubly appropriate step, though - one of Gruppo Merloni's dozen factories located all over Europe is situated on the site of the old Benelli motorcycle plant in Pesaro. . Benelli moved out of there in 1981, into a modem factory built with regional aid on the outskirts of Pesaro, where then-owner Alessandro de Tomaso built smaller-capacity Moto Guzzis alongside the handful of four- and six-cylinder Benellis still in production. In 1989, De Tomaso sold the Benelli company to local woodworking machinery magnate Giancarlo Selci, who ironically began his working life sweepingup the floor in the Benelli factory. Selci's main interest, though, was to acquire the modern plant to promote expansion of his machine-tool empire: The handful of 50cc bikes built in a corner of it since then, using engines purchased elsewhere, have only served two causes: tax reasons, and to keep the Benelli name alive ready for a takeover deal such as this. Andrea Merloni reached agreement with Selci in January 1996 to acquire the Benelli name and nothing else. That meant he and the new Benelli company's CEO/managing director Paolo Consiglio had to create a manufacturing operation from scratch - and the product line for it to make and sell. booming European scooter market (1.1 million units sold in 1996, 528,000 of them in Italy) make Benelli's revival irrelevant, as far as enthusiasts of real motorcycles are concerned? It's a bit like Maserati making a moped (which they did, back in the 1960s!). Doesn't it devalue the alI.ure of the born-again brand? Well- no; not at all, because there's a hidden agenda here, and one clue to its existence might be the name of the man recruited by Merloni at the end of last year to head up the new Benelli company's engineering department: Riccardo Rosa. A former A1fa Romeo and Ferrari Formula One race engineer, Rosa was the man who worked with Eddie Lawson and John Kocinski to tum the Cagiva 500 into a GP-winning bike. Then, after Cagiva pulled out of GP racing, he headed up the company's R&D program for the new four-cylinder F4 superbike - a project whose future appears confirmed after the sale of Ducati provided the funds to underwrite its development. Surely Rosa didn't leave Cagiva and join Benelli to spend the rest of his life working on scooters instead of superbikes - making the conjecture that BenelIi will soon find itself making sporting motorcycles again almost inevitable. Only one way to find out:· Ask Merloni himself, the man responsible for the rebirth of Benelli. Andrea, you've fulfilled the, dream of many bike enthusiasts and bought yourself a motorcycle ·company. Why Benelli? Because it's one of the most tamous and historic motorcycle brands in the world, born back in 1911 even before Moto Guzzi, and a long time before Ducati or Aprilia. Benelli is also a glorious name with a sporting heritage, winning two 250cc World Championships in Grand Prix racing - it has tradition and pres- quickly to the needs of the market. To achieve this, we've established a central "brain" headed by Rosa, dedicated to strategic development and supervising manufacturing. Our philosophy for Benelli's evolution of new models - of whatever type, is to use specialist consultants and outside suppliers to bring each design to a production-ready state, guided by Rosa and his team. Fabio Fazi's R&D cell produced the 491 scooter in only 12 months from scratch, using exactly this principle. We will establish ideas for new models, work out a cost structure and time frame, then utilize the best people in their respective fields to develop them, rather than do it all in-house. That way, we believe we can have the best of both worlds - a fast reaction time to market developments, and the best engineering talent working on our products. It seems from the several bright young engineers I've met here today that I've known from their time with Bimota, Ducati and Massimo Tamburini's Cagiva Research operation, as if you have quite a bit of design talent already working in-house. Yes, we went shopping for the right staff - ann found them! We were looking for people who are young and enthusiastic, like us. The average age of our work force is under 30. Ours is a historic company composed of young people, in which enthusiasm and tradition are combined. We think we have a really good specialist team, capable of original ideas and translating them into reality. This all sounds like an extension of the just-in-time assembly-not-manufacturing "offshore" production techniques employed so successfully by Aprilia, but now applied to the design stage. Will BeneUi's production operation follow a similar route? specific, because our bu iness plan first requires us to get Benelli back in the marketplace via our range of scooters, and to establish the corporate structure which will permit us to go to the next level, which of course is motorcycle production. Have you done any preliminary work on the design of a future motorcycle range? Not yet, but we will start doing so in the next few months, because we do want to accelerate Benelli's return to the worldwide motorcycle market as a prestigious sporting marque. But for this you need a lot of investment capital, as well as techhical and human resources - a fourstroke multicylinder motorcycle engine eats up many times the development costs of a two-stroke scooter, especially if you make the engine yourself, as we will certainly do. We won't use somebody else's engine, but must develop our own, rather than buy it in readymade, which it makes obvious economic sense to do with scooters. This means that becau e of the big sums of money involved, we must be sure of choosing the right way, before investing the profits we plan to make from scooters on developing a BenellT motorcycle design, and going racing with it. So is it your intention that Benelli will return to the race track under Merloni direction? Of course, I very much hope so. Any business plan for the long-term development of the Benelli company and its return to motorcycle production must, 1believe, include superbike racing as an integral part of that - not only to reposition the marque in the minds of the pu lic, but aI 0 as the why and the wherefore of product development. And of course, as a racing enthusiast, I think the best way to invest in the future of our company - especially one By Alan Cathcart

• Cover