Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128150
Benelli Tornado 900 Tre Crunch quest.iGII: Does By ALAN CATI«:ARl' '" PHOTOS By Ka EDGE o doubt about it. Ever since making its public debut at a glitzy, high-society presentation in its home town of Pesaro two-and-a-half years ago, there's really only been one question anyone wants to know the answer to about the three-cylinder Benelli Tornado 900 Tre sportbike: What's it like to ride?! N 56 APRIL 17, 2002' cue I green- lind-silver triple's sexy styling and lithe looks, the work of Benelli's to match its undoubted - thus allowing the latest lost legend of 1tlI1ian motorcycling now hitting the British designer Adria!1 Morton, cam- comeback trail to touch the tarmac ouflage a motorcycle long on promise running? Has this historic marque, but short on delivery? Has the work of with its roots in Grand Prix racing but whose latter-day revival has till now the company's small-but-dedicated R&D team, now headed by former Bimota chief designer and Aprilia RSTlOOO Futura R&D boss Pierluigi Marconi, permitted the Tornado's go • n EI _ S focused on trying to out-Vespa Piaggio and build a better scooter, succeeded in (re- )establishing its bigbike credentials by going heads-up successfully against the likes of Honda and Ducati, Suzuki and MV Agusta, to develop a worthy contender for the title of most desirable sportbike on planet Earth? Testing the singleton works Benelli Tornado 900 racer last November, which Australian Peter Goddard pedaled to a cluster of points-scoring finishes in last season's World Superbike series (nice handling, but short on outright power and midrange torque compared to its more established rivals), only gave a partial clue to resolving that question. But now after becoming the first person outside Benelli to ride the Tornado in its green-and-silver preproduction guise, in the form it will commence manufacture in mid-April with assembly of the first batch of 150 limited-edition, high-end street versions price-tagged in excess of $30,000, to be followed in September by the volume-production version costing less than half that - I can answer it at last. Now I know what riding the Tornado's like on road as well as track. Does it deliver? Read on ... In fact, the chance to find this out came not at Benelli's home base on Italy's Adriatic coast, but more than a thousand miles away on the other side of the Mediterranean. That's the distance factory tester Gianluca Galasso and his mate Alessandro Zanni clocked up in just 24 hours according to the "on-board telemetry" fitted to their pair of Tornado streetbikes, riding from Pesaro to Valencia aboard them to watch the first round of the World Superbike Championship in Spain - though that's a bit of a fancy name for the bicycle speedos strapped to the handlebars to make the green-and-silver preproduction prototype and its black carbon-fiber-clad development hack sister bike road legal! Only one thing wrong: Having proved the Tornados' long-distance credentials by holding them hard open for miles on end at speeds in excess of 120 mph and paid the price with a total of no less than eleven fuel stops to replenish the 19.5-liter (S-gallon) fuel tanks (apart from their overnight stop for dinner and some shuteye in Nimes!) the Benelli duo arrived at the Valencia circuit at midday on Saturday, to find Goddard's bike a non-starter. Ouch! The company's singleton race entry had been scratched after blowing three motors in succession in qualifying, all of them 2002-spec engines which had each expired after just three laps with melted gear pinions in the camshaft drive, the result of incorrect heat treatment by an outside supplier. With just a single 2001built older motor left, the team decided to withdraw, and will indeed sit out the next three rounds of the World Superbike Series until Monza, opting