Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Ghezzi & Brian Mata Guzzi Furia (Above) The package I. powered by Guzzi'. fuel-injected Vii Sport, a i084cc pushrod V-twin that produces _ e 94 horsepower. The bike weighs Just 409 pounds. ILefQ The furta _ a cut-clown Paoli upside down fork and a 420mm Braking disc brake. the narrower VII Sport rear wheel housing the same hypoid shaft final drive unit. The result is a sweet-steering bike with far greater suspension compliance than any other Guzziengined streetbike I've yet ridden including any Magni - thanks in no small part to the reduced unsprung weight at both ends. But another crucial factor is Ghezzi's ingenious - and minimalist - rear suspension design, incorporating a tie-rod on the right acting as a parallelogram counter to the Guzzi engine/transmission package's inherent torque reaction and its adverse effect on suspension response and handling, coupled with his needle roller-bearing progressiverate linkage for the sophisticated Ohlins shock. This allows him to use a softer spring, resulting in a more supple ride without affecting compliance under acceleration. And, unusually, the engine is not offset in the frame to give more space for a wider rear tire than the 160-section one used in the Supertwin - everything> centered up nicely, and though there's precious little space between the drive shaft and the edge of the Furia's 180/55-17 rear tire, Ghezzi says it's sufficient even to allow for tire growth at speed. The result is that the Furia handles as close to a normal sportbike as you could ever expect a shaft-drive V-twin with lengthways crank to do. Thanks to the torque rection of the cardan, such bikes are often not the slightest bit reassuring when it comes to cornering, other than hard on the gas around a fast sweeper, and usually require a rocJ:<:-hard rear spring to compensate for the wind-up effect of the shaft transmission - in turn inviting trouble when you hit a bump crank¢d over. On the Furia, you can 40 APRIL 2, 2003 actually feel the rear wheel following the road surface, just as you can on a properly developed conventional sportbike, rather than delivering road shock by skipping over irregularities like on other Guzzis, and rather improbably ride comfort is considerably enhanced as a result, even on such a hard-nosed street-sweeper of a bike. The trick is to be gentle and above all smooth with the controls. though - only if you get impetuous with the throttle or clutch will the Furia suddenly snap to the outside of a bend; otherwise you might as well be on a Tuono or Monster. And the best compliment I can pay Ghezzi & Brian is that within a couple of miles I'd completely forgotten I was riding a shaftie at all - well, except for the godawful five-speed 9uzzi gearbox, which had the typical trouble of third gear refusing to select about 50 percent of the time, and even when it did go in, doing so under protest with a graunch and a clatter that even Enfield India owners would deem a little excessive. Giving it lots of time between changes and rigorously using the clutch didn't make a lot of difference, and really this agricultural transmission was the only downside to riding what is in almost every other way a dynamically satisfying and fine-handling sportbike. The crazy thing is that Guzzi has already fixed this problem in-house by developing the sweeter-shifting six-speed gearbox fitted to the VII Sport, which in any case would be much more at home in a serious streetrod like the Furia. Only - originally Moto Guzzi management in the pre-Aprilia era declined to supply tois to Ghezzi £, Brian, so Giuseppe went ahead and designed the Supertwin/ Furia chassis ar-ound the five-speed 'box. With Aprilia now in charge, when Guzzi saw what a good job he'd done on the bike, it had a change of heart - but too late: there's no space in the tightly-packed short-wheelbase frame to retrofit the slightly bulkier six-speed transmission without a comprehensive redesign, which at this stage is economically impossible for such a small,volume manufacturer. What a shame - because the agricultural old gearbox really impacts your enjoyment of riding the bike, as you miss another gear powering out of a turn and curse out loud as you stamp on the lever to force it home! One thing Guzzi did get right on the VII motor fitted to the Furia is the smooth, strong throttle response and controlled pickup from as low down as 2000 rpm with very little judder in the drivetrain, delivered by the well-mapped Marelli EFl with none of the spitback or hesitation that used to characterize its two-valve push rod motor in sporting guise.. Still, the Mandello firm has now been fitting fuel injection to its bikes for longer than any other European manufacturer except BMW, so it should know by now how to dial in the digits well enough. to smooth out the jerky pickup from a closed throttle that some other firms still haven't eliminated on their products. And in its Furia application, the engine doesn't make the bike sit up in a left-band turn when you get hard on the gas for the exit like it does on the stock VII Sport, even with the weight that Guzzi has trimmed from the steel flywheel compared to other models in its range, which can even develop into oversteer if you close the throttle to rescue a slide then open it again abruptly. On the Furia this negative side effect of the lengthways crank doesn't happen - and neither does the engine vibrate as intensely around the 5000 rpm mark as the stock VII does, indicating perhaps th.at Ghezzi has mounted ,the engine better in his frame, in which it acts as a fullystressed chassis member. Good job: This is a Guzzi done right. It's one that honestly deserves to reach a wider market than the handful of customers which Ghezzi £, Brian's limited but growing worldwide importer roster can hope to achieve, especially at its sticker price in Italy of $16,500. To help achieve this, G&B have a newly-appointed Texasbased U.S. importer who's set to market the two current models quite ~ aggressively by -entering a pair oJ Supertwin racers in the AMA National Pro Thunder series. Fitted with 8V Daytona engines bored out to 1225'cc and producing 130 bhp at the rear wheel, these should provide some potent competition for the Buell Firebolts currently heading the pushrod ~ challenge to the dominant 748 Ducatis in this confrontation of twincylinder opposites, Pro Thunder success would surely generate justified Stateside interest in G&B's street products - but though l hate to say so, it shouldn't come to this. Aprilia boss Iva no Beggio has already visited Perego to check out the Furia, and the smartest thing his new Moto Guzzi management could do is to pay Ghezzi & Brian a chunk of Euros to allow them to immediately adopt the Furia design for in-house volume production, which would allow it to be sold at a much lower price - after redesigning it to install the muchneeded new six-speed gearbox. This on the one hand would allow Aprilia to fast-forward a new Moto Guzzi model which has already undergone 18 months of R&D and is customer-ready for at least handmade production, but it would also permit them to target a much younger, more demanding clientele of sport-riding customers than anything they've ever produced since the original Le Mans almost a quarter of a century ago. Go to it, Aprilia: the Furia is much too gOOd a bike to keep it a niche-product secret. CN

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