Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ally at the Milan Show in September including the X1R Superbike contender. Britain gets an ovaVroad course However, that's not the only Nomura connection with bike sport, for the boss of the bank's principal finance division, Guy Hands, a heavy-metal music fan and former door-to-door encyclopedia sal"sman who led the William Hill takeover and is reputedly Britain's highest-paid financier, has been revealed as the leading investor in the company wluch will build what is being termed as the Daytona of Europe, Britain's first bankedoval paved race track since Brooklands was constructed back in 1907. The Rockingham Motor Speedway will be constructed on a 300-acre si te formerly housing an ironstone mine on the outskirts of Corby in Northamptonshire, a former steel town located not far from Silverstone in the center of England and now the focus of huge international investment 0.5 billion pounds of investment has created 14,000 new jobs in over 900 new businesses, in a location well-served by motorways, and with 57 percent of Britain's 54 million population living within 100 miles). The brainchild of property developer and motorsport enthusiast Peter Davies, Rockingham will - like Daytona, as well as Honda's new Twin-Ring Motegi circuit, set to host the Japanese bike GP in April- include a 2.237-mile infield course within the 1.5-mile tri-oval banked circuit. Both tracks have been designed according to FIM/FIA safety regul.ations, and with finance in place. thanks to Hands and other investors, and planning permission approved, construction of the complex will begin this spring, with a full race program of bike and car meetings planned for 2001 - though the first phase, including the oval and road courses, as well as 38 pit garages, a kart track and commercial workshop units, will be completed next year. With the intention of importing American-style convenience - '130,000seat grandstands will form part of the final design, from which it will be possible to see any part of both tracks - as, well as well-planned facilities for both race teams and spectators, Rockingham the same man who designed the now aging but still stron,g-sellCagiva expands range with V·twin, more fours The creators of the·two best-selling models currently in the ing desmo V-twin street rod back in 1992.. These new Cagiva V-twins will be built alongside the comDucati catalogue - Massimo Tamburini's 916 and Miguel Angel Galluzzi's Monster - have designed their last desmo V-rnins. pany's Oucati-powered Gran Canyon, 125 Planet and Mito twoBoth designers have opted to stay loyal to Cagiva boss Claudio strokes, Cucciolo scooter and the Husqvarna off-road range in Castiglioni in Ins high-profile efforts to rebuild the company Cagiva's new Cassinetta factory, which is now in full producafter the final split with Ducati. Each has his own lavishly tion, with four out of the five assembly lines in operation. equipped CRC design studio, where he will develop new modThe fifth? That's all ready to start rolling, awaiting the start els exclusively for the Cagiva Group. of MV Agusta F4 Strada production in April. Tamburini's is in San Marino, where he's developing the "We've turned the comer, and we are ready to stirt reaping range of four-cyl'inder bikes that will bear the MV Agusta the rewards of the substantial investment of more than $300 name, beginning'with the F4 already announced in two ver- million we've 1J)ade in new production facilities, new models sions, but with roadster, sport touring, biposto and superbike and new dealer networks," says Claudio Castiglioni. 'lIt will models also planned, powered by either the existing 750cc radial-valve engine, or the 920cc long-stroke version whicl1 techni- take even more commitment to return Cagiva to the position we occupied a decade ag6, as Italy's largest motorcycle manucal boss Andrea Goggi has under development. The first of these will debut at the Milan Show in September, facturer, but thanks to the artistic genius of Tamburini and Galwhere Cagiva will launch two new MV Agusta models - the F4 luzzi, ·and the technical expertise of our 200-strong R&D staff, Biposto two-sea ter version of the current Strada, and the F4 we are on the right path." Looking at the F4 MV Agusta, as well as the prototype CagiBrutale, a muscular, aggressively styled Naked roadster availva "Anti-Monster," on which Cagiva tester Paolo Bianchi has able in both 750cc and 920cc guises. . Meanwhile, hand-built production of the first 200 limited- already clocked up more than 10,000 kilometers, it's hard to disedition F4 Serie d'Oro models has finally begun in the factory agree with that. race shop at Varese, with manufacture of the volume-production Strada set to start in Cagiva's new Cassinetta factory in April, as scheduled - th.e press launch has been fixed for the first week of the month, in Misano, and customer bikes should begin to be shipped soon after. Meanwlule, in his recently completed CRC studio near Cagiva's Varese factory, Miguel Ange1 Galluzzi is hard at work developing the range of twin-cylinder bikes which will kick-start the Cagiva marque's comeback, starting with a pair of fuel-injected liquid-cooled V-twin models due to debut at the Milan Show in Sep~mber. . These incredibly sharp-looking Naked roadsters - a base-model version with two-into-one exhaust, plus a sportier, upmarket version with twin pipes - represent Cagiva's 21st-centun' answer to the C8giva's new Cassinetta factory has four of five production lines in operation, with the fifth success /)f the Oucati Monster, created by gearing UP for MV Agusta F4 Strada production next month. Speedway seems set to become the British Centre of Speed, and the likely site for future top-level international motorcycle and car races. Ducati to go public While CVC Ca pital Partners waits to uncork some profit from its investment in Dorna, its American venture-capitalist counterpart TPG is about to reap its first installment from having taken over Ducati. Two years after acquiring 51 percent of the troubled Italian sportbike firm (and a year after completing the takeover by buying out Cagiva boss Former Elf goes car racing Japanese car giant Toyota is poised to enter Formula One GP racing, following rival Honda's Formula One return in 2000, and the Cologne-based project will be headed by a name familiar to bike enthusiasts with a gqod memory: Andre de Cortanze. The French engineer previously worked for Renault on their Le Mans-winning sports cars as well as the turbo Formula One program, before masterminding Toyota's own recent Le Mans effort after spells with various teams such as Prost and Sauber. While at Renault, de Cortanze was responsible for designing the revolutionary Elfe endurance race bike, the hub-center machine powered by factory Honda engines which was also the first motorcycle to use carbon disc brakes. De Cortanze also penned the radical Elf2 500cc GP racer, with its unique (and, sadly, impractical, push-pull steering but his most enduring legacy to motorcycle design was the modern version of the single-sided swingarm concept previously used on small-capacity Italian runabouts. Honda bought the patent jointly owned by him and Elf which governed this, and the trademark Pro-Arm design was the result. Solchiro Honda sits astride the EIf2 500cc Grand Prix bike, designed by Andre de Cortanze (left), the man who also came up with the modem version of the single-sided swlngarm that ultimately became Honda's Pro-Arm. Claudio Castiglioni's remaining 49-percent interest), TPG has taken the preliminary steps toward floa ting part of Ducati on the New York stock market, by. filing with the American Se=ities & Exchange Commission on February 17 for an initial public share offering, coordinated by a trio of Italian and American banks and set to be listed both in Italy (on a screen-based dealer market) and on Wall Street. . Following that announcement was a release dated March 4, stating in part: Ducati Motor Holding SpA ("the Company") would have a global initial public offering of 90,200,000 shares of its common stock, in tl1e form of shares or American Depositary Shares. The net result of the offering, including a concurrent private placement, will be that approximately 68.7 percent of the Company's outstanding shares will be held by the public and approximately 31.3 percent will be held by the Selling Shareholders (the collective of Italian and American banks including Texas Pacific Group). The price of the ADS (each representing 10 shares and "expected" to be approved for listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "DMH") in the United States would fall between $27.49 and $34.08. The prospectus attached to the filing dated February 17 revealed that Ducati suffered a 7.o-percent fall in profits in 1998, to 564 n-ullion lire (about $330,000), compared to almost fol,lf times tha t figure in 1997. The fall was caused by what was termed "extraordinary charges/' although turnover grew 23 percent to 465 billion lire in 1998 ($270 million). According to the filing, net proceeds will be used to repay debt and for "gener;ll corporate purposes," which may be taken to include not only Ducati's substantial investment in retaining its World Superbike title this year by setting up its own in-house racing department, but also in developing the new range of models needed to underpin the Italian marque's expansion toward its targeted 50,000 annual production. Super CBR900RR in production Honda Britain's EvoBlade, the leadingedge, limited-edition :version of the CBR900RR developed for them by its Isle of Man IT-winning RS Performance affiliate, has entered production, with the first 28 examples of the 200 bikes planned to be built already completed as of February 14 and delivered to customers in Britain, Germany, Japan, Australia and the United States. The model made its U.s. debut at tlle Indianapolis Show in February and has a healthy list of orders, according to RS boss Russell Savory, with another ba tch of 30 bikes completed except for back-ordered Ohlins suspension parts. Isle of Man TT legend Joey Dunlop has arranged to race an EvoBlade in the Formula One and Senior IT races this year as well as in the Production IT if efforts (apparently led by Yamaha, presumably fearful of the R1's Route 1 to the winner's circle being diverted!) to overturn its homologation prove unsuccessful. Dunlop will be a part of what could end up a four-man Honda Britain/RS Performance team that will include Simon Beck (who rode Kawasakis last year and was the only non-Honda rider who looked as though he n-ught win anything), Jim Moodie (Production IT winner on the Sanyo Honda), and possibly America's own Kent Kunitsugu, editor of Sport Rider magazine. Husky fighting back Husqvarna is working on a new, small-. er-capacity, four-stroke MX engine for the SOOcc Open class tha t will be both lighter and more compact than their existing motor, and that will debut next season in time for commercialization in 2001. Inevitably, this is in response to the challenge posed by the new Yamal1a and KTM ultra-lightweight engines, as well a's Joel Smets' World. Champion Husaberg. CN 5

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