Long-distance Prowess

‘ITS DESIGN DATES BACK TO THE 1920S BUT IT’S THE sort of bike that would take you right the way down Italy with no problem at all,’ said the Falcone’s proud owner. ‘It just plods on and on... and it hardly uses any fuel either.’

Southern Italy was a fair bit further than I had been planning to go on the little red Moto Guzzi single, but I knew what he meant. This Guzzi might only have been an elderly 500-cc single-cylinder roadster, but the Falcone had proved its long-distance prowess countless times over the years ― not least in the gruelling Milano-Taranto race that covered the length of Italy.

In many ways it is the Falcone, with its horizontal single cylinder, that best sums up Moto Guzzi, Italy’s oldest motorcycle marque ― more even than the transverse V-twins for which the firm from Mandello del Lario