Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 3 JANUARY 20, 2015 P79 thing in 2013. That was itself an increase over 2012, when we sold 6,000 units, up from half that number in 2011, just 3,600 bikes, compared to just 2,200 in 2009, the last year of Harley ownership. So we're building momentum and we would have done even better this year if we could have made enough examples of the Dragster to meet demand. We had three times more potential sales of that bike than we'd expected. We budgeted on selling 500 units, in the end we managed to build 1,700 alto- gether, but we had orders for 2,200 bikes. So the last 500 went unsold because we didn't have any way to manufacture that many. It's a nice problem, in one way, so that you don't have any unsold stock sitting around, but it was very frustrating. If we'd had the capacity to build more we would probably have exceed- ed 10,000 motorcycles sold in a single year for the first time ever in the history of MV Agusta. But we should definitely reach that landmark in 2015. So how many bikes a year do you envisage MV Agusta's production ceiling as being? Fifteen-thousand bikes a year, not more. We can be very profit- able at that level, with maybe 10-12,000 of that number being lower-cost three-cylinder bikes, the rest the more expensive fours, but only high quality, high performance, high end motor- cycles. You know me, I am not able—we are not able—to make cheap bikes. I don't know how to do it, and I don't want to have to learn how to do it. We thought about doing this when we in- troduced our entry-level 675cc bikes, but then we moved up to the 800cc class and to bikes like the Dragster RR. This is the kind of motorcycle MV should be making, and our customers tell us we're right in that belief consider MV Agusta acting as a development consultant and hire out your services to other companies? Perhaps even including AMG? No, I've been asked many times to sell our engines to a third party for them to use in small volume production bikes, or even to sell one or two engine units for someone to build a cus- tom bike, but I won't do it. If you want an MV Agusta, you must go to an MV dealer, nowhere else How does the future look? I think next year will be very important for us, because we're entering the Touring segment for the first time, and in a big way for a small, high quality manu- facturer like MV, with two new models quite unlike anything else available elsewhere. The Turismo Veloce is for me a really, really beautiful bike that's also very practical. And the Stradale is a masterpiece which we man- aged to surprise everyone with at EICMA, which doesn't often happen these days with the web previewing everything. We'll have it in our dealers in December, and the Turismo Veloce will fol- low in April. Why did one overtake the other? Because you launched the Turismo Veloce a year ago, and now the Stradale which was presumably con- ceived later will reach produc- tion four months earlier? We actually had the Stradale ready in 2013, too, but we didn't display it because we wanted "YOU KNOW ME, I AM NOT ABLE—WE ARE NOT ABLE—TO MAKE CHEAP BIKES. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT, AND I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO DO IT." by making each new model we produce on the three-cylinder platform a total sell-out. How many people do you have working for you at the moment? Two-hundred sixty, of whom 190 are in R&D and racing. We have almost 30 people in the race department. So we are practically an engineering com- pany, rather than a manufactur- ing one—except you need one to have the other. To the point that you might

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