The Italian renaissance had as big an effect on the trials world of the 1980s as the Spanish industry had 15 years before. In the same way the Spanish filled the vacuum left by the turmoil in the British industry, so the Italians were there to provide the next generation of trials bikes to a market desperate for something to buy.
It wasn’t quite as instantaneous as such a statement makes it sound, but nor did Spain oust the British manufacturers overnight, however there is little doubt for the Eighties the new accent was Italian. In truth, the Italian makers had been around the trials scene for quite a while, Fantic for instance had no less a rider than former European champion Don Smith mounted on one of their tiny machines in the Scottish Six Days Trial of the late Seventies, and SWM had secured French champion Charles Coutard to develop their machine in that same period.
One of the issues faced by the Italian industry was to do with their machine capacity, in a world where bigger was seen as better, the smaller bikes were ‘toys’ or ‘mopeds’ and not for real riders who obviously needed bigger machines. Neither of those statements are
