MOUNTAIN LION
Benelli is Italy’s oldest surviving motorcycle manufacturer, celebrating its 111th birthday this year after being founded in Pesaro in 1911 by a widowed mother of six named Teresa Benelli, who wanted a steady occupation for her six sons, then ranging in age from 22 to just nine years old.
She set the boys up in business running a mechanical repair workshop, working on bikes and cars until an earthquake destroyed their business in 1916. Undaunted, the brothers rebuilt it from scratch and branched out into engine manufacture, designing and building their own 75cc two-stroke engine for use as a clip-on motor for bicycles. Inevitably, this led to production of their own complete motorcycle, a 98cc two-speed two-stroke, which first appeared in 1921, meaning Benelli today is Italy’s oldest existing motorcycle company, narrowly ahead of Moto Guzzi.
But it’s also the fastest-growing one, as it clocks up the 17th anniversary of its December 2005 acquisition by Chinese manufacturer Qianjiang (QJ), with its sales in Italy in 2021 rising to 13,000 bikes, representing 11 percent of the overall marketplace and an increase of 57 percent year-on-year. That’s thanks to its fastexpanding range of enticingly priced new models manufactured by QJ in its modern, well-equipped 670,000m² factory in Wenling, China, but developed and styled in Italy at Benelli’s traditional Pesaro base on the Adriatic Coast.
These have catapulted the historic brand right to the top of the sales charts, with its TRK 502 adventure tourer the best-selling motorcycle of any kind for the past two years in Italy, Europe’s largest bike market, consigning the previous table-topper, BMW’s R 1250 GS, to second place. Since its 2017 launch, Benelli has sold 39,000 examples of this model in Europe alone, split between
