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/128220
Roberto Ziletti WiIl there be any crossover between Vor and Mondial? POSSibIY. One idea we're examining is to build a single-cylinder Mondial Street Scrambler using a Vor motor. It may be that all our street-legal models with a license plate will be badged as Mondials. Q sive-Iooking Tuono/Monster-style streetrod, or something less extreme? We will launch this model at Milano in September, and we absolutely will have bikes at our dealers in March - we have learned from the mistakes of others as well as our own past history, that this is the only way to do business. In 2004 we will manufacture 500 examples of the Nuda, plus 250 Piegas. We don't want to become a volume production brand, only to maintain our exclusivity at a high but accessible price reflecting the quality of the bike. The Piega costs Euro 30,000 in Europe, which I know is not cheap but which does reflect that status, plus we have a very strong order book, so it appears customers appreciate the way we've positioned Mondial in the marketplace. The Nuda will be a true Naked bike, very narrow and purposeful, with the personality of a Streetfighter, stripped-down while still stylish. I promise you one thing - you won't mistake it for anything else on the street, especially when you see what we've done with the exhaust system! A A BY acquiring Vor, you've also by definition acquired the capability to manufacture your own engines, albeit only competition singles at present. Looking further down the line, do you see using this capability to develop your own family of twin-cylinder Mondial engines? No. We have a very valuable relationship with Honda which extends some way into the future and which we intend to respect and maintain. So Mondial V-twins will always be powered by Honda motors. But in Vor we are working hard to produce new engines - our fuel-injected 250cc four-stroke will be launched at the Milan Show, with reversed cylinder and forward intake, plus electric start. It will be a very avant garde design, still with gear camshaft drive like our bigger engines but very compact and very powerful, revving to over 12,000 rpm, and there will be both enduro and MX versions, plus we are also looking at a kart motor based on this. In addition, we are working on a 570cc version of our existing 525cc Supermoto engine, which we also hope to bring to the market for next year, though at present this is still only at prototype stage. I'm pretty confident we'll do it, though. Q A Q 48 YOU mentioned your dealers - what exactly is Mondial's distribution system? We have very few Mondial dealers - essentially one per country - because we wanted to work closely with a small number of outlets which are capable of providing the personal service and good backup that customers purchasing a premium product like a Mondial will expect. This essentially means we will appoint one carefully chosen importer for each market, so in Italy for example we have one exclusive dealer for the whole country in Motosalone Pogliani, which is also the biggest Ducati dealer in the country, and just one also in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Q A Returnin g to the Mondial Nuda, what's the philosophy behind this? Will this be an aggresJUNE 25, 2003' cue I e n e vv s France, Spain and the UK. We also have just a single dealer in the USA, where all Mondial models from the Piega onwards will be homologated for sale on the street, not as pretend racers, another in Japan, and we are looking for one in Australia. Vor, however, has its own separate distribution network, which we will maintain because of the specialist nature of the dirtbike market. IS it true to say that Mondial has become rather bigger than you expected when you started down along the road to reviving it? Will you expand the range to include, say, a sportstouring model, or some other version still with a sporting flair? well, we're still very small, compared to Honda! Look, the basic concept is the same for Mondial as it is for Vor - we're never going to build thousands and thousands of bikes a year. I expect the top limit will be 1000 annually for Mondial, maybe 1500 maximum per model over a two-year cycle, depending only on the demand -because we're small, we are also very adaptable and can move fast to respond to market conditions. What we're interested in doing is producing well-designed, hand-made bikes of proven quality and individual design, built in limited quantities with the added reassurance of Honda engines, for customers who can be sure of good personal backup after purchase, because we're big enough to support them but not so big they become just a number. We aim to offer the best of both worlds, off-road and on the street, with the intention of introducing a new Mondial model every couple of years - 2002 was the Piega, 2004 model year will be the Nuda, maybe two years after that Q A