Benelli Quattro 500 LS
It’s a chilly day at Midlife Classics bike shop, near Droitwich, and I am most intrigued by the Benelli. It comes from that period when the Italians were creating a lot of genuinely unusual motorcycles, none more than the Pesaro company. Often considered as just a copy of Honda’s 500, the Quattro is far more than that.
It does, however, certainly appear like a Honda, with its sohc four-cylinder engine, though look at it against the Japanese creation and there are some significant differences, not least that the barrels on the engine are canted slightly forward rather than vertical.
The frame, however, is nothing like a Japanese design – the bit you can see, the cradle of the bike, is beautifully made, yet it’s what you can’t see that makes all the difference. Where the Japanese were hiding their ugly (yet clever, cheaper and quicker to manufacture… Matt) pressed-steel sections under the petrol tank, the Benelli’s frame is all about tubes, and high quality tubes at that. This makes the frame so much stiffer than Far East products. The only bits that are not tubes are stamped mounts for the rear shocks, the engine mounting plates, and there’s a little gusseting around the headstock to make the frame even less flexible. I find later the suspension is firm but not uncomfortable, as is the seat.
Apart from the Benelli frame and engine, the bike drips with the standard equipment used on 1970s Italian motorcycles: Brembo brakes, Marzocchi forks, Sebac shocks, Veglia instruments, tiny idiot lights and some of the worst switchgear known to man, which looks modern but is clumsy to use. The plus side is that the clutch lever clamps directly to the ‘bars, unlike being part of the switchgear casting, so if the bike takes a tumble, you don’t lunch the switchgear. I’d rather use 1970s Lucas gear, though – and that’s saying something. It’s almost as if the designer’s nine-year-old child was let loose with a box of Lego... and they left it at that. Everything is in the wrong place. Those compact Veglia clocks sit in very funky
