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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128184
Aprilia Group boss '"ano 8e99io By ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS By GIGI SOLDANO y ou had to have visited there any time in the past century to fully appreciate what new owners Aprilia have achieved in completing Stage One of their painstaking transformation of Italy's most historic, most legendary, motorcycle marque, Moto Guzzi, and its equally historic Mandello del Lario factory. For since purchasing the company from former owner Alessandro de Tomaso and his American backers, Trident Rowan, at the dawn of the new millennium, Aprilia boss Ivano Beggio has poured in excess of 10 million eurodollars into wreaking a makeover on the sprawling factory, covering 40,000 sq.m in the firm's picturesque home town, nestled on the shores of Lake Como in the foothills of the Alps, just a few kilometers from the Swiss border. Gone are the grimy, dilapidated factory buildings, with floors caked with decades of grease, where walking around the antiquated production machinery meant flirting with danger should you lose your footing. Instead, while preserving the orig- 22 DECEMBER 1 1, 2002' cue • • inal structure of each edifice, Aprilia's management team, led by Beggio's right hand man, 41-year old Roberto Brovazzo, has carefully, almost lovingly restored the old plant. Parts of it, like the wind tunnel used to test the avant-garde streamlining which took Moto Guzzi's wind-cheating singles to a series of World Championships in Grand Prix racing against more powerful, multi-cylinder machines back in the 1950s, are listed historic buildings which are part of Italy's rich panoply of architectural heritage. Within, they have completed the transformation by re-equipping the restored factory with the latest machine tools and manufacturing equipment, allowing the company's loyal and committed 290-strong workforce - who under previous ownership refused to allow the Guzzi factory to be moved to Monza, 30 km. to the south, and the Mandello site to be sold for development to construct 9000 bikes in 2002. That's almost double the number built in the last year before Aprilia took over, but only a step along the way to the eventual 20,000 motorcycles a year, which, Brovazzo says, is the company's immediate target neVIl's with single-shifts working on each of the firm's two production lines. It may have happened just in time, before arguably the most prestigious of Italy's array of trophy marques went into permanent storage, as its direct British counterpart Norton has so unfortunately done. But Aprilia's last-ditch rescue has provided the basis for what may be the most dramatic corporate turnaround in motorcycle history, arguably exceeding in fabric - if not perhaps in scale - even Harley-Davidson's MBO-driven fairytale comeback from near-failure to total fortune over the past 20 years. Moto Guzzi is on the way back, and that was the unanimous reaction from press and public to the display which by general acclaim was the hjt of Intermot 2002 at Munich in September. There, the Guzzi stand was juxtaposed to its Aprilia parent's in a self-evident message to the marketplace: Aprilia is weaving its own brand of magic over Guzzi, which is on track - and on schedule - to be reborn with a range of new models at the 2003 Milan Show next September. The firm's Intermot display provided not only a taster of how this will be accom-