Over 20 years ago I was living and working in Italy, and as a fan and owner of Italian motorcycles, I’d always try and indulge my passion in any way I could.
One weekend, I had to drive from Livorno, on the Tuscan coast, to Bologna, for a work opportunity, so I decided to pass by Via Bergami 7 to look at the old Morini factory. Closed for a good nine years by then, the large red ‘Moto Morini’ letters had disappeared from the top of the factory, but apart from that, the old plant, though now a building site, looked more or less the same as it had done when I last saw it, still barely in activity, in 1990 – closing two years later in 1992.
Sad to see, as it was a place that had seen so much activity and success, especially with arguably Moto Morini’s most famous models, the 350 and 500cc V-twins. These bikes had both brilliant handling and superb engines, but these attributes weren’t a recent development in the Morini DNA. Single cylinder machines had been a mainstay in the early Morini/Mazzetti days at their previous factory in Via Berti, stretching back to the 1930s, and after the Second World War and into the 1950s, their reputation as solid, quick and reliable motorcycles grew, as
