Laverda

LAVERDA

Motorcycles Massimo's way

MASSIMO LAVERDA WALKS among his cherry trees on the tall hill wherehis house stands. The hill, draped with grapevines and fruit trees, has belonged to the Laverda family for generations. From that hilltop, Massimo can see the factory that bears his name, miles away across a hazy plain. The red-white green Laverda emblem, tiny at this distance, shines above the white building. Massimo plucks a few dark, ripe cherries, offers them to his guests. All the while, he is talking about motorcycles.

Massimo Laverda is obsessed with motorcycles. They are his life, his love. His family has been in the motorcycle business for years, but most of that time was spent producing small sport and utility machines for the Italian market. Motorcycles were just a sideline to the main family businesses of agricultural machinery and custom castings. It was Massimo who pushed to build something bigger in the late 1960s, and that brought about the 750 Tw in modeled on the Honda 305 Super Hawk.

That motorcycle was the right bike at the right time, and it sold well during the early 1970s, before the onslaught of large, Japanese fourstrokes. The follow-up model, the 1 OOOcc Triple, won a loyal following, but was never as commercially successful. The 500 Twin that followed the 1000 was a commercial disaster, coming to market just as new' Italian laws severely penalized over-380cc machines. But Massimo had already taken Laverda in a new direction: After seeing a Zundapp with a liquidcooled. 125cc two-stroke engine at the Paris show in 1 977, he negotiated on the spot to buy engines for Laverda, and then directedhis staff to have a prototype 125 ready for the Milan show 22 days later. They did. and the result was the high-quality 1 25 Laverda that defined the top end of the Italian 1 25 market and became a mainstay of the company.

That bike also is largely responsible for Laverda’s current problems. After Zundapp folded due to financial difficulties, Laverda began manufacturing its own engine for the 1 25 just last year. Laverda had just completed a major redesign of the 1000s, as well, and both projects had been expensive. But 125 sales dropped sharply last year, and sales of the new 1000 also were down. The company fell deeply into debt, and entered amministrazione controllata, the voluntary reorganization allowed by Italian law.

Massimo Laverda is determined that the Laverda motorcycle company will survive the reorganization. That places him at odds with his brother Piero, the co-owner of the company. Piero likes motorcycles, too, but the family has healthier businesses that are not so laced with uncertainty. He'd rather put resources and energy into them instead.

That might make good business sense, but Massimo is a motorcyclist first. His energy and resources are being expended with motorcycles. Before the money problems, the company had been completing the development of a 350cc two-stroke V-Three engine, similar in configuration to Honda’s NS500 race motor. The 350 was designed to be easy to manufacture, and powerful (57 bhp at the rear wheel); and because the 350 cl ass is expanding in Italy, Massimo knows he has a winner if he can get this engine into production.

It all comes down to money. Massimo is creative and willing to compromise. He knows that perhaps Laverda won't be able to have this engine exclusively, that it might have to share the 350 with a partner. And so talks are being held with other Italian companies.

Massimo has other programs in mind, as well. He is investigating building 200 replicas of the 750SFC, the orange, twin-cylinder racer last produced in 1975. A similar situation exists with the 1000SFC street racer based on the last Triple, which is being requested by several Laverda distributors. It w ill be the last of the big Laverda Triple line. Only a few hundred will be made, and they all are already presold to the British, German and Japanese distributors.

All of this means money coming in, but Massimo almost dismisses the motorcycle; for him, the days of the 1000, the 550-pound sportbike designed to cruise at 125 mph, are over. He is interested in smaller, lighter, more versatile machines. Perhaps a street-going Single, a 500 modeled after a Norton Manx. Or a 75-bhp 600 Triple, a machine based on one cylinder bank of the extravagant Laverda V-Six, a very advanced design from six years ago that was just too complex ever to see production.

Massimo loves thinking about these projects, loves talking about them, loves working to see that they will be accomplished. “The good thing about my work,’’ he explains, “is sometimes I have the chance to make exactly what I want.’’