Bimota On the Mend

Bimota on the mend

LETTER FROM Europe

ALAN CATHCART

Lovers of the exotic and avant-garde in motorcycling will be pleased to learn that the Bimota factory’s period of “controlled administration” under a court-appointed receiver appears to be paying off. The first 12 months of the company’s two-year breathing space—under a kind of Latin equivalent of America’s Chapter 11 reorganization—will be completed on June 30. And Bimota boss Giuseppe Morri says that the suspension of existing debts—provided that the company deals on a cash basis with its current suppliers— has enabled the firm to turn the tide.

Certainly, judging by my recent visit to the small but ultra-modern factory in Rimini, there’s no lack of activity. A couple of new workers have even been hired to boost the 30-man workforce. Morri is now solely in charge, having purchased the remaining stock in Bimota held by former partner Massimo Tamburini, who is now in charge of the Cagiva design studio, only a half a mile away. But Tamburini still maintains a tenuous relationship with the company he helped found, since amongst the projects he’s working on at present is a Bimotadesigned prototype built around a 750 Ducati Pantah engine. Tamburini is preparing the bike for the Milan Show in November.

Work at Bimota presently is concentrated on updating the road-bike range rather than developing the unique and innovative Tesi, which remains, however, a part-time testbed for the company’s long-term plans. “This year the Tesi will only appear at shows as a publicity vehicle,” says the machine’s creator, Federico Martini, Tamburini’s successor as Bimota’s chief designer. “I’m working on two important new road-bike projects on which the immediate future of the company depends, but when these are in production, I plan to return to the Tesi. I already have a tubular spaceframe designed for it which will be cheaper than—and almost as light as—the carbon-fiber chassis, and more sensible in production terms. We definitely intend to resume development of the prototype, still with hydraulic steering and the other features, in 1986.”

Bimota is well aware that there is a trend away from the liter-plus megabikes on which the firm's machines have traditionally been based. The 1135cc Suzuki-based SB4/5 range is, admittedly, proving a good seller, with 300 machines built this year primarily for Bimota’s traditional markets in Germany and Japan, but both of the company’s new designs are based on 750cc engines. The first to appear will be the DB1, Bimota’s own Ducati-engined. single-seat sport machine, which is due to be track-developed in Italian events from mid-June onward. Street versions are planned for production this September. Morri and Martini think such a bike could open up new markets for them in Europe and North America, yielding immediate cashflow that would enable the company to pay off its suspended debts by June of 1986 and to resume normal trading.

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That's the plan, anyhow. But its success hinges not only on the ready availability of the necessary Ducati engines, but also on finding enough customers (200 in the first year is the projected figure) who will pay the much higher price for a Bimotabuilt desmo V-Twin road bike, rather than one designed by Bimota but built by Cagiva. It’s quite a gamble, especially considering that the prototype DB1 bears more than a passing resemblance to the Cagiva version, which I’ve also seen. Morri claims to have sewn up a firm alternative supply of engines for the bike, after his talks with Cagiva—which now owns Ducati, remember—foundered on the issue of whose name(s) should appear on the tank.

Meanwhile, Martini has constructed a lightweight, chrome-moly spaceframe for the Pantah engine, with alloy subframe for the seat. The

planned styling is reminiscent of the original 400cc Tesi. Sixteen-inch wheels are fitted front and rear, and to save length, the lower pivot for the rising-rate rear suspension is mounted on the upper face of the sheeted-over swingarm gusset. The DB 1 will use a new-style Marzocchi front fork with built-in hydraulic anti-dive, and either a deCarbon or Marzocchi unit at the rear. Anticipated dry weight of the road-ready bike with all street equipment is projected at 160 kilograms (353 pounds). Martini is also developing Bimota’s own line of Ducati performance parts, some of which will be fitted to the DB 1 as standard equipment, others as a options. These include a dry clutch, close-ratio gearbox, revised cams and pistons, and in the future, a four-valve cylinder head. Meanwhile, dyno work with new exhausts has produced 73 bhp at 8500 rpm at the gearbox, with maximum torque of 52 lb.-ft. at 6500 rpm—an overall improvement over the recently announced Ducati 750 FI sports roadster.

The other new Bimota project is even more exciting, and more likely to appeal to the traditional Bimota customer: the YB4, a Yamaha FZ750 engine in a Bimota chassis. I saw an FZ engine on the bench in the experimental department during my visit, and strangely enough, it had no engine numbers. Can Yamaha be assisting this project in the background, especially after the success of the YB3, which took Jon Ekerold to a world roadracing title in 1980? Bimota has never produced a Yamaha-engined road bike, but the first could appear this fall.