Italian Rare Bit
Now then, in my previous article about a Gilera Giubileo rebuild I said the next bike might not be Italian. Well, that just goes to show that you can’t believe everything you tell yourself…
When circumstances offer opportunities, it is difficult to resist. After retrieving this bike from an Italian collector (see An Italian Adventure on the RealClassic website) it became an interesting rebuild. In Italy in the 1950s and 60s there were many motorcycle manufacturers. It seems to have been the heyday for motorcycle manufacture. This is a story about one of the lesser known manufacturers, although one still better known than some others.
The manufacturer of this machine was MI-VAL and the bike in question is a 2 stroke 125cc machine, a GS or possibly GL variant or a combination of the two from around 1954. A friend calls it an Italian Bantam… hmmmm. Previous history of the machine is unknown, so it’s difficult to say if what I have is as it came from the factory. The price I paid for this project was under £500, so a good starting point. I intended to rebuild the machine to as-new condition, estimating an outlay of about £1500 in parts and services.
As I tend to
