Cycle News

VOL. 53 ISSUE 47 NOVEMBER 29, 2016 P95 kids?" I told him, "No, no, we've got a secret project approved by Luigi Benelli for the U.S. [Ferracci laughs]. The old man wanted to fire us!" After the wildly successful launch of the small Benellis into the American market, Ferracci was, once again, sent back to America, this time to train the auto mechanics at the various department stores how to repair the bikes. The intention was for Ferracci to stay just long enough to fix the backlog of broken bikes that had stacked up and train the department store auto- motive center mechanics on repair and then head back to Italy. But just before he was scheduled to go back to Italy, Marco Benelli came to Philadel- phia to visit and told Eraldo, "I've got good news and bad news." The bad news was that Benelli had been sold to De Tomaso and according to Marco, the factory and Benelli headquarters were in chaos. "Marco told me I had a good job here and it would be better to stay in America, because so many people in Italy were being fired." Ferracci saw the handwriting on the wall and began to seek other opportunities. Interestingly, he nearly landed at Harley-Davidson's racing depart- ment, then being run by Dick O'Brien. "I flew to Milwaukee and they wanted to hire me, but it was only $100 per week," Ferracci explained. "O'Brien told me it was no problem, that I could live comfort- ably in Milwaukee for that much. So, I said, 'Okay, I'll do it.'" But when friends in Philly heard Ferracci might be leaving they quickly found him a job at a local shop paying him over four times what Harley of- fered, just to keep him in the area. Ferracci never made it to Milwaukee. "Even when I was working for Benelli, I would fix bikes for my friends, and more and more people were coming to me be- cause they liked my work. So, I was thinking about doing my own thing anyway." By 1980 Eraldo established Fast by Ferracci. Honda was well aware of Ferracci's reputation at Benelli and quickly pegged him to consult them, working out of Honda's massive New Jersey ware- house. "I started racing Hondas and that's what led me into doing what I do today," Ferracci said. Ferracci, who as a young man was an up-and- coming road racer before the factory saw his talent as a builder and pushed him to quit racing to focus on component design, suddenly was racing again on the drag strips of the East Coast, and he quickly became one of the leading funny bike racers, winning a slew of championships. By the mid-1980s with speeds approaching 200 mph, Ferracci was on one of his drag bikes when at 160 mph the wind caught underneath the bike and lifted the front end completely off the ground. "I told my son that I had to get off these things right now, otherwise I was going to get hurt," Fer- racci smiles. But the custom building Ferracci had honed all his life really hit a peak with the wide-open world of drag racing. He became famous for the me- chanical fuel injection he designed, among many other state-of-the-art racing components. Vintage motorcycle racing began skyrocket- ing in the mid-1980s and Ferracci's performance shop quickly became the go-to place for vintage riders on all brands to have parts made and to get their bikes prepped for racing. Soon riders on Ferracci-prepared motorcycles were cleaning up in AHRMA racing events and Ferracci machines dominated various class championships. By way of vintage racing, Ferrac- ci soon became a regular presence at AMA road racing nationals, prepping the bikes of Battle of the Twins competitors Pete Johnson and Kurt Li- ebmann. Ferracci machines were instant winners in the Battles of the Twins GP2 class, and Ferrac- ci's long and fruitful term inside the AMA Pro road racing paddock would make him a legend. Next week we will pick up on Ferracci's story as he and Ducati establish a great relationship that would eventually lead to revolutionizing the machines raced in AMA Superbike. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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