Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE P hil Schilling, Reno Leoni, Udo Gietl, Pops Yo- shimura and Rob Muzzy were among the small cadre of tuners who became living legends by way of producing many of the iconic AMA Superbike racing machines of a golden era that lasted about a quarter of a century. And so it was with Eraldo Ferracci. Ferracci emerged from the world of drag racing and went on to become one of the last in a long line of super- bike tuners who became every bit as famous as the riders who raced the motorcycles they built. Builders like Ferracci were the final vestiges of a century-long tradition of motor men who knew every inch of their racing machines. They would build and modify parts—often by hand—that would almost magically produce better power, handle and stop better or increase reliability. By the mid-1990s the vast mechanical skills and knowledge held by tuners like Ferracci gradually diminished in the age of computer design and electronics. Now the behind-the-scenes heroes of racing teams are as likely to be a team of engine management, suspension and frame programmers, who each know one very specific—but in this day and age, supremely important—segment of making a motorcycle faster around a racetrack. But the ro- mantic era of one man in overalls holding a wrench that produced legends like Ferracci are history. We have the now defunct department store Montgomery Ward to thank for bringing Ferracci to America. Ferracci was an engineer at Benelli in the mid-1960s and the company wanted to break into the American marketplace. Ferracci and some col- leagues from Benelli were sent over to survey the market and help devise a plan. "We saw kids riding minibikes all over the place," Ferracci recalls. He and his colleagues returned to Italy and for weeks, after regular business hours, they set about quietly building a Benelli minibike targeted to the American market. The little machine Ferracci helped design eventually sold in Montgomery Ward, JC Penney, Sears, W.T. Grant and a few other major department stores at a clip of 45,000 units in the first two years. "It was incredible," Ferracci smiles when thinking how quickly the Benelli minibikes and scooters went from concept to showroom floor. Interestingly, the Benelli minibike project Fer- racci was instrumental in helping launch, almost got him canned. "One night we were working [on the prototypes] and the big boss Giuseppe Benelli, he was like 80 years old, came around and was peeking around the shop. The next day the chief of the staff called me into the office and said, "What are you f*%^#! guys doing? What are you making, toys for little P94 ERALDO FERRACCI: LAST OF AN ERA - PART 1 PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE FERRACCI COLLECTION Eraldo Ferracci puts a Benelli- made Riverside 175cc machine through its paces.

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