Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Tuscany away fro m its Rimini base have also been scrapped . "Bimota was born here beside the Adriatic, and that's where it must remain," says Comin i decisively. To confirm that, the company has already recruited 16 workers en ro ute to the eventual 25-strong w o rkforce Co mini believes will be need ed in t he future . "We want to produce betw een 300 and 500 bikes a year, not more," he said firmly. "Th ese will all be built by hand to a very high standard so th at our motorcycles w ill o nly be the best of the best ." First prio rity, though , is to clear the dec ks of the leftover product t hat has been sitting in the factory fo r the past four years. co mp rising initially around I 10 ex amples of th e t roublesome V Due 500cc two-stroke twin, a bike t hat was the major cause of the company's de mise . These have all now been sold off to an o utside co mpany. together w ith the rights to the mode l and allthe spare parts , so the V Due is now strictly history as far as Bimota is co ncerne d. More relevantly, thou gh, Comini also acqui red 53 partially assembled examples of the 5B8K Vtwi n powered by the TLI OOOR Suzuki e ngine, th e com - ed African prince was supposedly brokering on behalf of the company shortly before he disappeared with a huge wad that the cash-starved constructor cou ldn't afford to lose, The se 50 bikes essentially re pre sent t he batch of unsold SB8K models, duly completed and clothed in a new paint sche me, and as such are a 2000 vintage , time- war p product - though with significant mechanical improvement to the intake system. As a re sult. they lack some key updates introduced since the bike was in vogue , the most obvious of which are t he radial brakes t hat rival (and are more eco nomical than) Italian V-twins that bo th Aprilia and Ducati now carry. These are , howe ver, used o n the new, Suzuki-engine model Bimota is now building, of w hich no t mor e t han 150 examples w ill be co nst ructed - thus neatly using up t he rem aining stock of TLI OOOR mot ors . That's the SB8K Santamon ica (named after t he Autodromo di Santamonic a - t he proper name for Bimota 's home race circuit at Misano , just 15 miles from its Rimini factory), retailing for a hefty Euro 40,776 (abo ut $49,699), including 20 -percent Ita lian VAT as against the Euro 39,420 ($48,000) asked for "La Gob ert" (don't wo rry; Anthony hasn't had the operation... yet) and fitted with Ohlins race forks, as we ll as an impr oved Swed ish shoc k. C ompare that to t he Euro 18,700 ($22,799) being asked for the new MV Agusta F4 1000S w ith its arguably more it was wheeled out of mothballs for me to compl ete half a dozen laps in the race day lunch interva l of the 2003 San Marino round of the World Superbike Championship, to mark t he fact that Bimo ta was back in business, this short test taster reckoned to be an even mo re authe ntic assessment than expected. Thinking back to when I rod e the original SB8 K prototype on th e st reet in Bimo ta's dying days four years ago, slinging o ne leg over the Gobert Replica br o ught the memo ries flood ing back. Co mpared to the SB8Rbefore hand, the Kmodel seemed to have gone on such a serious diet that it was effectively a whole new bike, a "hachi balbu" eight-valver w ith a Japanes e heart, instea d of a desrnoquattro "o tt o valvole." It felt slimmer and smaller than the old R-bike and didn't push as much air, tho ugh w ith a quite high seat height of 81Omm (32.4 inches , tha nks to the exhausts exiting beneath it) combined w ith the low -set but w ides pread chp-o ns, the re was a lot of body weig ht on your ar ms, which became tiring w hen stuc k in a line of traffic wh ile trailing th rough town . Th e screen was lower but stillallowed you to tuck away okay in a straight line, as I pro ved to myse lf by pulling an indicated 265 kph (abo ut 165 mph ) at 9200 rpm in sixth gear on the Ancona autostrada , wit h no undue wind turbulence and more than 2000 revs to go before hitting the soft action 11 ,500-rpm rev limiter, in the with all street equipment to a remarkable 172 kg (378.4 Ibs.) - 6 kg (13 Ibs.) less than the SB8Rand a massive 25 kg (55 Ibs.) less than Suzuki's own TL 1000R, fitted with the same 59 kg (130 lbs,) engine. Fully loaded, this gave a wet weight of just 187 kg (4 11.4 Ibs.), split 51/49 percent front to rear (52/48 dry), a balanced distribution made possible by the way the Bimota chassis design compacts the mass of the bike. Gobert's racer scaled 4 kg (8.8 Ibs.) over the SBKweight limit. at 166 kg (365.2 Ibs.), but it had a mo re rad ical 54/46 distribution to aid front-e nd grip in trac k use. Though the 996cc (98 x 66 mm) V-twi n Suzuki engine was unmodifi ed internally, t he combinat ion of Bimota' s trick, siamesed t itan ium exhau st system and rev ised EFI settings, plus the bigger air box and more direct, high-pressure air intake feed , result ed in a claimed 5-bhp power increase, compared to the SB8R, w hich yields 142 bhp at 10,200 rpm. This extra top -e nd pe rformance hasn't compromised the SB8K's streetbike credentials, but the te st bike I rode didn't feel mappe d properly, with a layered power delivery and a jerky pickup fro m a closed t hrottle - a pro blem t hat back then afflicted many other fuel-injected superbikes, especially the Yamaha R7. Now fast forward to my Misano test t his year of t he Gobert Repl ica and my chance to sample the intervening wo rk o n t he SB8K by t he small Bimota R&D team, "This is the machine on which Bimota works rider Anthony Gobert scored an upset victory in the second round of the 2000 World Superbike Series at Phillip Island." - pany's final new mode l befor e it went under. This is the machine o n whic h 8 imota works ride r Anthony Gobert sco red an upset victo ry in the seco nd rou nd of the 2000 World Superbike series at Phillip Island. In additio n to those halfcom pleted bikes, there also came anot her 160 Suzuki V-twin engine. delivered from Japan, and in try ing to dispose of this lefto ve r stock the new managem e nt at Bimota has deve loped tw o new, limiteded ition variants of the SB8 family. The fi rst of thes e (of w hich a maximum of 50 examples are now being prod uced) is the SB8K Gobe rt Replica, a relatively faithful, street -legal versio n of the Go Show 's Superbi ke race r, complete w ith his race number (50 I) on the tail sectio n and. yes , there is a significance to the digits. Levi's Jeans was the alleged pot e ntial sponsor of the 2000 Bimota fact o ry Super bike team, via a deal that a purport- glamo rous (if equally dated ) look s, its own in-ho use engine and a badge boasting a substa ntially more glorious history than Bimota 's, or eve n compare it to the more commonplace Ducati 999 mod els at prices ranging from Euro 16,995 to Euro 30,000 ($20,000 to $36,000), and you'll see t he scale of the mo unta in Comin i needs to climb to re -establish Bimota in the ma rketplace. Bring up t he Euro 24,480 ($ 29,849) being asked for the Mondial Piega, an exact equivalent of the Bimota SB8K but w ith a Honda engine rather than a Suzuki (and arguably better looks), and it seem s harder still to justify the se prices for the product of a company struggling to reest ablish itself as a customer option in the boutique bike business . However, value for money apart, it's the quality of the riding experience which the revised SB8K twins re present that will position them in t he sportbi ke hit parade, and the chance to ride them both briefly at the Misano circuit provided that opportunity. Given that o n the same track last year I'd become the o nly jo urnalist ever to test ride Go be rt 's actual superbike racer when unlikely event it wo uld ever pro pe rly pull peak revs in to p gear. But the big bon us on the SB8Kwas tha t yo u could now see yo ur hands when sitt ing on t he bike bec ause the SB8Rs unsightly twin-curved duets , looping up over t he ste ering head en rou te to t he airbox (itself increased in capacity) had been re placed by a single air duct under the T LIOOOR headlamp leading directly to the air box through the new Single-curved rad iator, w hich replaced by the trio of KTM-ma de radiators use d befo re th is meant you no longer had to ope rate the sw itchgear by a combination of feel and guesswork, and it was easier to tuck do wn behind the screen in a straight line. Plus, you also felt mo re in control of the bike , mo re a part of it. The fuel tank - at 22 liters (5.7 gallons), tw o liters (half a gallon) bigger than the Rmode ls - has been redesigned to be less bulbous and intrusive than befo re and is now made o ut of carbon fiber rather than plastic, though it's stillho mologated for the street. This and the array of other carbon parts o n the bike, including the rest of the bodywork, helps to red uce dry we ight now led by ex-Aprilia enginee r Alberio Strada (see sidebar). Just sitting o n the bike , yo u not ice o ne improve me nt stra ight away, which is that the re's much less weight o n yo ur shoulders and wrists though t he se at he ight is unchanged thanks to t he under-seat exha usts (now fitted wit h a catalyst and thus Euro 2friendly, albeit at a four-kilo weight penalty o n a bike now scaling 176 kg dry). The clip-e ns seem to have been raised and reangled, so you have a less-tiring, more user-friend ly riding stanc e w hich make s you feel part of the bike, sitt ing wit hin it rather than perched on top . However, the seat is now fitted much closer to th e tank than on the proto type I rode fo ur years ago and also - maybe mo re to the point is closer than on the real Go-Show racer, which we dges taller riders in place and prevents them fro m moving about the bike as easily as they'd like. An Aprilia Mille - even the new, smaller factory versio n - or the Ducati 999 are much more spacious by comparison. Against them the Bimo ta do es feel short, which , w ith just a I390mm whee lbase, the bike in fact is by o ne-liter V-twin supe rbike standards. CYCLE NEWS • SEPTEMBER 29, 2004 37

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