ULTIMATE RIDE
A ride aboard Moto Guzzi’s fabled mid-Fifties water-cooled, double overhead cam 500cc V8 race bike is the dream of anyone remotely interested in the history of Grand Prix racing. Thanks to the generosity of Sammy Miller, my dream has come true!
The proprietor of England’s Sammy Miller Museum, Sammy has has uncovered two examples of Moto Guzzi’s exotic 500cc Grand Prix hardware — a V8 of the type Moto Guzzi developed in 1955-1957 and the Bicilindrica V-twin that preceded it (see Motorcycle Classics, September/October 2013). Like the Bicilindrica, Sammy says the V8 was “assembled many years ago from a mixture of replica parts and original components spirited out of the Guzzi factory, after they pulled out of racing at the end of 1957. After 18 months of drawn-out negotiation with a collector not far from the Guzzi factory in Lecco, we were able to acquire these two for the Sammy Miller Museum, and like almost all our bikes, they’re ready to be ridden.”
Indeed, the Guzzi R&D engineer who played a part in creating the V8, the late Umberto Todero, once confirmed the existence of these bikes to me. “At Moto Guzzi we built a total of six
