Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Laverda turning to liquid? With Francesco Tognon's takeover at Bimota now confirmed (the Italian textile magnate has 50 percent of the equity in the restructured prestige marque, with former owners SCM and other minority shareholders taking up the balance, all jointly earmarking 20 billion lire ($12 million) in investment funds to revitalize the company), attention now turns to his former marque, Laverda, in which he retains a 10-percent shareholding. On November 23, 1998, a meeting of the Laverda board of directors voted to put the company into voluntary liquidation - but only as an interim move toward restructuring it. "This sounds much worse than it is," says Laverda sales director Aurelio Lolli, "but it's only a necessary step under Italian law, aimed at setting the company on a new course. Our expansion of the Laverda marque continues as before, with our work force paid as normal, and in fact we're planning to furtl1er increase production in 1999 to around 4000 units, from the 2000 built this year, as compared to just 667 motorcycles in 1997. And our new three-cylinder engine will go on the d yno for the first time right around the first of the year, as projected. It's business almost as usual." lndustry sources reveal that this situation has been brought about by Tognon's split with the Spezzapria cousins, Nadir and Roberto, whom he brought on board a year ago to beef up Laverda's operation but who now own a majority of the equity. A move to increase the company's capital five-fold to 15 billion lire ($9 million) in order to underwrite production of the new three-cylinder range, as well as to further improve quality of manufacture at Laverda's Zane factory, was declined by the Tognon faction on the Laverda board. Hence the Spezzaprias' decision to draw a line under the present oper.ation and start afresh, with new partners - but first they needed to present a clean balance sheet to the trio of outside investors, all from within the motorcycle industry, to whom they're understood to be talking. Unconfirmed rumors place one of these as HarleyDavidson, still looking for a European partner after the collapse of theiJ" negotiations with KTM, and anoth.er as "Ducati Super Sport" (ISBN 1 85960412 9) provides an exhaustive. coverage of the two-valve desmo range, beginning with Taglioni's green-a11d-silver 750SS models a quarter-century ago and coming right up to date with the new Terblanche-designed 900 SuperSport launched in April 1998. Authoritative detail of the wealth of design cl1anges from one year to another is included, in BMW, whose continued interest in expanding their twowheeled product base led them to take a close look at buying Bimota as well as Ducati, before the TPG takeover. Maybe third time lucky? As part of the process of attracting new outside investment, Lwerda has lifted the covers on its compact new three-cylinder superbike engine, which has been under developmen tat the Zane factory near Vicenza for the past two years. A product of Laverda's R&D team of ex-Lamborghini Formula One engineers headed by Nicola Materazzi, who continues to upervise its development as a consultant after his retirement, this fuelinjected OOHC 12-valve in-line engine has been revealed as being a substantially oversguare, ultra-short-stroke unit measuring 85 x 52.8 =, for a capacity of 899cc. With the Weber-Marelli EFI featuring three throttle bodies measuring 50mm each, utilizing a very steep angle of a more flowing, readable way than Falloon's previous works, and the work is illustrated by a good selection of color photos of each variant - though the reliance on styling shots, to the exclusion of any photos or drawings of the engines themselves, is to be regretted. .Still, this book won't only be of interest to restorers, but it is a must-have item for any Ducati enthusiast's bookshelf, downdraft and feeding large inlet valves set at a flat total included angle of 26 degrees to the exhausts, and with offset cl1ain camshaft drive on the right side, the modem-looking liquid-cooled engine is targeted to produce 135 bhp at the rear wheel in street-legal form, at 11,000 rpm (but to rev to over 13,000 rpm in superbike race gUise). The nominally wet-sump design sees a typically Italian, long, slim oil tank under the crankcases, with a sixspeed gearbox aJ;ld large-diameter wet clutch above it. This engU1e is projected to form the basis of the new-generation Laverda Jota 900 Superbike (now scheduled to be launched in 2000 and to enter production early the following year), a well as other 900cc and 1150cc models. But whether that will indeed happen now depends on the ongoing health of the Laverda compru1y, and the Spezzaprias"ability to bring new investors on board. containing a huge amount of reliable information covering the early beveldrive bikes, their Pantah-based successors, and the current desmodue twovalve models, ranging from annual production figures to a detailed account by Pierre Terblanche of how the current 900SS model carne about designed in Britain, by a South African, built in Italy! Pity there's no reference to the halffaired version of the same bike tha twas developed at the same time and is now in production, because Terblanche's account of how to make two halves of the same whole is worth recounting; but apart from that, Falloon's book is a desmodromic delight and deserves to be purchased by anyone interested in La Moto [tal ;alla. Cleaning up the two-stroke Aprilia has revealed that it is working on a Ditecl1 EFl package ready to be.fitted to its RS250 sportbike's V-twin RGV250 Suzuki engine, which the company believes will be capable of meeting all known future emissions regulations, Without sacrificing power. o prizes for guessing who's jn charge of this project, though - given that the man responsible for the Bimota 500 Vdue (ilie world's first fuel-injected two-stroke sportbike), Pierluigi Marconi, has been working for Aprilia for the past year in their new San Marino R&D base, together with most of his development tean1 from Bimota! Given that·it was Bimota's lin1ited resources whicl1left them unable to tackle the production problems of the Vdue effectiyely, but that this more than proved its worth in prototype form, Aprilia must be a much better bet to apply direct-injection technology successfully to the two-stroke sportbike. This makes the introduction of a fuel-injected RS250 (using Orbital EFI teci1nology) early in the next century a strong possibility. It could be sold in California and Switzerland, too. And who knows: Perhaps Aprilia might even do a deal with Bimota to adopt the 500 Vdue themselves - or maybe even produce a fuel-injected street version of their 500cc V-twin GP racer! Is that why the twin is about to re-enter the 500 GP scene after a year away, with Tetsuya Harada aboard, in 1999? Watch this space. 7

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