That Italian Connection
THAT ITALIAN CONNECTION
Small and Harley-Davidson weren’t always mutually exclusive. Certainly Dick O’Brien knows that. His stable of Harley-Davidson racing machinery includes a few small bikes with the Harley name on them. They came from Harley’s Italian factory, the company that had been Aermacchi before Harley bought the factory and sold the small 250cc bikes as Sprints in the U.S. Later on the Italian Harley factory produced two-strokes, and it is one of these Aermacchi two-stroke 250s that Jay Springsteen still uses to win short track races.
The small Harleys were good bikes. They were sturdy and reasonably good performers. George Roeder still has the Harley streamliner that carried him to 176 mph at Bonneville, powered by the small four-stroke 250 Aermacchi engine. What they didn’t do was sell, so in 1978 Harley sold the Italian factory back to the Italians who had been running it. No more .was it called Harley-Davidson, or Aermacchi. The name became Cagiva.
Having not heard from the Cagiva factory for several years it was a surprise to see a display at the Daytona trade show filled with Cagivas and other Italian bikes.
Cagiva has grown since taking over the company. Sales have increased from 6000 a year to 28,000 a year and there are new models. The old two-stroke singles are still being produced as street bikes, and these are the biggest sellers for the company. But Cagiva likes racing and has had a successful year in Italy with motocross and enduro machines.
First there was a water-cooled 125 motocrosser, and now there’s a 250cc watercooled motocross bike, plus a 125cc enduro based on the MXer. More interesting is a new open-class MXer, the MXR500.
Like most of the competition, the MXR500 uses a air-cooled two-stroke Single, bore and stroke 86.5 by 82mm. It has a modern-looking chrome-moly steel tube frame, with some of the same built-up backbone look of the Maico. For the rear suspension there’s a single shock, lever-operated system providing 13.4 in. of rear wheel travel. The linkage looks like a Honda Pro-Link and is claimed to provide progressive suspension control. Up front are large tube forks, with 11.8 in. of travel, axle carriers that look like the latest from KYB and a disc brake. Few trends have been ignored. Even the seat fits over the back of the gas tank like the latest Yamaha motocrossers. About the only part missing from this week’s list of Boy Racer trick stuff is an aluminum swing arm, the Cagiva using a chrome-moly steel arm.
Not all of Cagiva’s attention has been spent on motocrossers. A new sohc Single has been developed and the first model it has appeared in is the Ala Rossa 350cc dual-purpose bike. This is an entirely new engine, 82.5mm bore and 65mm stroke for 348cc. A larger 500cc version is also available. It uses a chain driven overhead cam, wet sump, two-valves per cylinder, five speeds and a Dell’Orto 32mm carb. The frame is a conventional steel tube double cradle, but with a linkage-controlled single rear shock.
What makes these bikes of more than passing interest is Cagiva’s interest in the U.S. market. The company is working on setting up a sales network as early as next year. The smaller two-stroke Singles for the street might not be bought in, but the motocross, enduro and new four-stroke models look interesting and competitive.
