Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

• • MORE TO COME FROM MV/CAGIVA J [I C MV/Cagiva's product-led comeback is set to intensify in the coming year, with more new models already under development and scheduled for launch in the year 2000. The Intermot show in Munich, Germany, next September will see the debut of Cagiva's Raptor 650, the middleweight version of designer Miguel Galluzzi's Vtwin roadster. The bike will be powered by Suzuki's carbureted SV650 V-twin engine and is set to go head-tohead pricewise with Ducati's M600/M750 Monsters. Cagiva is also understood to be working on a 650 V-twin street/enduro to slot in between the Navigator 1000 and Canyon 500 single, as well as a Suzu ki V-twin-engined family of half-faired cafe racers to compete with the 750SS/900SS Ducati V-twin desmos, only with much more performance and liquid-cooled eight-valve engines. "The Suzuki SV650 engine allows us to build a 21stcentury version of the Ducati Pal1tah," says owner Claudio Castiglioni. "We have no plans to develop a Cagiva V-twin Superbike using the Suzuki TLlOOOR engine why compete with such a piece of two-wheeled perfection as our MV Agusta F4? Doing so makes no sense. Instead, we will concentrate on the enthusiast sportbike market with the Cagiva range of models, priced very competitively and offering excellent performance, as well as Galluzzi's superb styling." Also due to be launched at Intermot are two new MY Agusta models, with a third very different one coming at the Bologna Show in December. The first two will be four-eylinder members of the F4 family, led by the Brotale naked bike now already undergoing road testing in prototype foml. Th.is after a redesign by CRC boss Massimo Tamburini on the basis of two earlier efforts by British designers working in CRe's San Marino base. One of these, Adrian Morton, originally created the first Brotale in full-size day model guise th.ree years ago, before departing for Benelli, where he since produced the striking, avant-garde Tornado 900. His colleague Sam Matthews (like Morton a recruit of Pierre Terblanche, now Ducati's design director, during his time at CRC) also worked on the Brutale project before leaving to join his mentor Terblanche at Ducati. But now maestro Massi- o o o o o o o ws.com reader poll question of the week: o Wh o ~ c ,Oil 60 JANUARY d you have chosen as Rider of the Century? 19. 2000' To CBst your vote, lag an to http://www.cyclenews.com. eye I e n e _ s mo has taken the project over, and it'll be launched at Munich in 870cc guise - the most the fuel-injected 750cc radial-valve F4 engine can be stretched to, with a stroked crank. (The compact nature of the in-line four precludes it being bored any bigger than at present.) Also likely to join it in due course will be a longstroke, sports-tOuring version of the existing 1'4, though it's unlikely this will be ready for an Intermot launch. MY Agusta will likely debut the F4SR Corsa at Munich (as a limited-edition, homologation version of the current F4S, sold complete with racer kit as the basis of MY Agusta's much-awaited return to world-class racing in the 2001 World Superbike Championship). MV Agusta's final model to be launched at the Bologna Motor Show in December 2000 is a very different kind of motorcycle - albeit a modem equivalent of the bike which kicked off the involvement of the Agusta family's aircraft company in motorcycle racing in 1948: a 125cc two-stroke single. Just as Massimo Tamburini produced the current Cagiva 125 Mito six years ago as a small-scale replica of his mouthwatering 916 Ducati Vtwin, so a year from now he'll do the same job on his seminal MY Agusta F4 design. Based on the same alloy deltabox frame and 125cc crankcase, reed-valve, singlecylinder engine fitted with a seven-speed gearbox just like Gioacomo Agostini's 1960s GP racers, the MV Agusta 125 Ago (why not?) will adopt the same distinctive single-headlarnp red-and-silver bodywork and sculpted fuel tank as the F4 - but on a reduced scale and with just a single silencer in the tail.

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