My Monica Bellucci Moment

My Monica Bellucci Moment

Right.  Recently, I've been thinking.  You probably heard the clanking and jarring of rusty gears. Apologies if it woke you.

Given my recent acquisition of a V85, it has inevitably lead to various questions - often tinged with incredulous tones-  along the lines of "so , err, when did you decide you wanted a Moto Guzzi!?" and derivatives of same.  Which naturally put the pondering equipment into action.

Happily, and this is probably one of the few happilies of this situation, being no longer of the youthful variety I can recall back to a time when we had a strange method of visual and written information sharing. They were known as Magazines, and alas, not unlike the Sports Touring motorcycle, are now on the brink of extinction.  One of the peculiar characteristics of said Magazines is that they were usually periodical, and thus dated.  Now, it may be that this fact can subsequently be used to more or less precisely date some of the transformative vignettes in a young man's (and presumably manette’s) life).  

So, despite the passage of decades, I can state to within a few weeks the moment that I opened the pages of a certain publication, and my heart skipped a beat of youthful desire.  The curves, the style, the way she looked, the exotic nationality, the magnificent body, the two perfect and prominent .......  Err, you better give me a moment here. I just need to check that this is the right Magazine story.  I've a few similar and probably not entirely unrelated incidents from that time, if you get my drift.

Ok, it's the right one. We can safely proceed in a (be warned, only semi) PG-rated fashion.  It was the Two Wheels issue of August 1994 that knocked me sideways.  Roland Brown submitted a "quick fang" road test of the Guzzi 1100 Sport.  Page 30, if you need to know.  

   

That report, incidentally, isn't overly glowing of the Sport.  I didn't care.  I was hooked. I was hooked on the visuals.  I was hooked on the alleged flaws. He preferred the older injected Daytona, felt it was a handful in slow corners, needed a considered and firm hand into the corners and was prone to flat spots in the cavernous 40mm Dell'orto float bowls.   Who gives a stuff about any of that, thought I? This girl looks and reads like sheer sexiness.  Granted, at 20 -21 years old, everything relates to sex.  But what of it?  That's not my fault, surely?

Fast forward a few months to the Australian release and the January 1995 edition of Two Wheels solidified my love affair.   Indeed, Jeremy Bowdler’s Road Review seemed to put all of my feelings on this bike’s raison d'etre into print.  He too waxed lyrically about Italian women, passion and red-blooded manliness.  And this one was painted in all red livery. Ay carumba!  

The Sport, of course, emerged into a market that had shifted ever more to hard core sports bikes as road weapons.  Honda had released the world changing CBR900 a year or so prior.  Suzuki had their ubiquitous GSX-R’s, Yamaha were cranking out FZR's and then Yzf's and Kawasaki populated the roadways with the ZX series.    And then there was the Ducati 916.  Oh my lord.

For many, the Duc personified the zenith of sports bike design.  There is not a line, a curve, a fixing out of place in that bike.  It flows effortlessly like mercury at room temperature, smooth and languid perfection.

And yet, somehow, for reasons I both still cannot quite pinpoint but also still "feel”, I preferred the lines of the Sport.  The best I can do in words is declare that it somehow mixed a supermodel with an athlete.  If the Ducati embodied the classic perfection and demureness of Sofia Loren, then the Guzzi gave me the distinct impression of the sultry, wild and dangerous beauty of Monica Bellucci. Also, at a bit over six feet tall, I wasn't after a short and compact bike, however svelte. I totally chose Monica.

There was, of course, a rather large Calliphoridae in the medicinal salve.  The price.  From memory, these things were upwards of $18,000 on the road. The All-Knowing Google Deity suggests that this is equivalent to $38,000 in today's Australian lira.  Even more problematic in 1994 is that I was an apprentice, earning in the vicinity of $6 per hour and $18k felt a long, long way off.  That's fine, super models are meant to be built from unobtanium, that's part of the mystique.

Fast forward to the end of the decade, and my own children started to arrive.  Motorcycling took a back seat through the noughties.  But I'd kept up to date enough to know that the Sport had become fuel injected in 96 - I've still got that magazine too - and then morphed into the V11 series.  Call me fickle, but these didn't grab me as much. Perhaps my attention was elsewhere. P'raps I'm just loyal.

Somewhere around 2012 the bug returned, and I started to look around again.  Now, it's time for a little diversion, if you'll indulge me.  Across my riding life, I can think of only two times that a Harley Davidson rider has paid me any heed.  One of those was following the purchase of a little Honda CBF250.  We bought it from Frankston, and she didn't have the confidence to ride it home.  That honour fell to me.  I was stopped at some lights on Frankston - Dandenong when a Harley pulled up. One of the big Fatboys, all chrome and leather and scowling looks and Barbie's cousin riding pillion on the back.  He looked at me.  I looked at him. He started laughing. So did Barbie.  Then they blew me into the weeds and were gone.

The other time was a little different.  The guys out at A1 Motorcycles handed me the keys to a demo Sport 1200 for a test ride. One of the newer four valve models. "Take it for an hour, 10 minutes tells you nothing about Guzzi's ".  It was my first actual ride on anything from Mandello. Once again stopped at some lights, this time in Heathmont. Once again, a Harley appeared, solo rider with some sort of club insignia adorning the jacket.  He looked at me. I looked at him. He perused the Sport up and down, then granted a couple of slow nods of appreciation.  Well, here was a turnup for the books.  Guzzi’s, it seems, occupy a rare position in motorcycling, straddling every genre and offering something that each subset can appreciate.   The contrast between both encounters stayed with me.  Heck, even my wife, to both our astonishment, pronounced that the 1200 Sport "actually kind of suits you".  I do recall enjoying the ride position and the character of the transverse V-twin.

I still wasn't ready to buy one, for several reasons, and in the end bought a cheaper, older Triumph Daytona.  Which I then flicked for an equally cheapish Triumph Sprint 955i , largely for the more comfortable riding position.  I was still a very infrequent rider, as my kids were still far from independent, but as the years rolled on, I was simply happy to have a bike in the shed.  In the meanwhile, Guzzi had entered what I've termed it's "small bike" era. The big blocks gradually vanished.  I loved the look of the V7 racer, but it was way too small.  A (albeit somewhat pudgy) praying mantis on a monkey bike type small.  The V7 Special not really any better, even after the changes to the Mkii and Mkiii.  So, again, I looked on, considered older second-hand models, procrastinated, and did nothing.

Then the Sprint died. I fired her up and was greeted with plumes of water vapour befitting a raunchy Norwegian sauna and a H2O puddle of doom gathering beneath the header/muffler union.  At best, a head gasket. At worst, a cracked head.  Either way, a sizeable project.  I'm going to pull the engine and strip it, but I've enough self-awareness to know that it's going to take me a while.  Ages, really.

So....now what to do? The kids are older, and I'd like to start doing bigger km's again.  I needed something that could do that.  But I wanted something unique, something different, something with a little class and a healthy dollop of charm. Something that, despite some apparent clashes of styling and intent, still manages to bring it all together and look stunning. A bike that would embody the ethos and lifestyle of motorcycling. Enter the V85TT, which happily had seen Guzzi build a bike a little more befitting of my height.   After devouring every bit of info and find every ride review available - in truth, like a manic teenager obsessed with their crush -, I finally managed to get a test ride on a Guzzi Australia fleet bike in spite of an apparent disinterest in the marque of the Victorian dealers.   That 15 minutes just made me outright smile.  I pondered on whether I should look for a Mandello, or await on the new Stelvio, but a water-cooled bike as my first Guzzi seemed pure scandalous anathema.  I was drawn to the simplicity and slightly ragged engine feel.  

Should I wait for VVT equipped 2024 models?  That seemed a more reasonable consideration. Nah, who really wants to wait six months?  Result? A few days later, I bought it.  A week after that, having negotiated a centre stand as part of the purchase, she came home.  And a couple of months in, despite, or maybe because of, having to fix a few things on her, I'm as happy as a porcine in the proverbial.

There is, naturally, still an overriding question unanswered. A lustful itch unscratched.  The Sport 1100.  Would I still want one as they all hover around the 30-year mark, with all the attendant problems that may come with it?  In the context of this rambling account, I can best answer it thusly - whilst Monica Bellucci is now three decades older, she's still Monica Bellucci. With everything my fervent imagination thinks that brings.

Therefore, ignoring the inherent logic failing within the maxim, never say never.  I'm sure my wife will understand....

See you on the road.

Jason Hannigan