THE Godfather
For 28 years MV Agusta dominated Grand Prix motorcycle racing, thanks largely to the determination of the man who created the team, Count Domenico Agusta. We look back on the legacy of the despot who died 50 years ago
MV Agusta is Europe’s most historic and successful racing marque – winner of 75 world titles in every class from 125 to 500cc, with 270 Grand Prix victories and no less than 3028 race wins all over the world, from Finland to South Africa, Daytona to the Isle of Man. These came in the 28-year period from MV’S victorious 1948 Italian GP debut with a 125cc two-stroke single, to the day the music died in October 1996, when its glorious-sounding four-cylinder raced for the very last time. From 1958 to 1974, MV Agusta riders won the 500cc World Championship a total of 17 times – uninterrupted. Even mighty Honda tried, but failed, to defeat them.
By all accounts Count Domenico Agusta, who passed away 50 years ago on February 2, 1971, was a person of extremes – egotistical, passionate, cunning, demanding, ruthless and capricious, according to some of those who actually rode for him. But nice guys come second, and the determination to win of GP racing’s Godfather, plus the unfailing support he gave the men who created and rode his bright red ‘fire engines’ to success, were underwritten by the profits of the Agusta family’s aviation business.
The creator of the Agusta company was Sicilian aristocrat Count Giovanni Agusta, who was one of Italy’s pioneer aviators, inspired by the achievements of the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss. In 1908 he founded the Agusta aviation company in Palermo, where his eldest son Domenico was born in February 1907, later to be followed by brothers Vincenzo, Mario and Corrado. In 1909 the family moved to an estate at Cascina Costa, today within the confines of Milan’s Malpensa Airport. The nearby Caproni factory was an Italian leader in powered flight, which Giovanni Agusta joined in 1913, and ended up running after the war. He also established an Agusta aviation workshop at Tripoli in Libya, then an Italian colony, plus another at Benghazi in 1922. In 1923 he founded Cantieri Aeronautici Agusta at Verghera, next to Cascina Costa, to convert Caproni WWI bombers to civilian use, and repair other planes.
By 1927 he’d also completed his own Agusta aircraft, which first flew in September that year. But just two months later, Giovanni Agusta died from the after-effects of an operation, leaving Domenico (known to family and close friends as ‘Micuzzo’) to run the company, together with his strong-willed mother Contessa Giuseppina Turretta.
Domenico Agusta demonstrated his far-sightedness during World War II, after the overthrow of Mussolini’s Fascist government in July 1943. He correctly envisaged that aircraft manufacture would most likely be forbidden, so the week after Mussolini’s downfall (and before Italy’s capitulation to the Allies that September) he assembled a team led by Mario Rossi – later to head up MV Agusta – to start developing a rigid-framed girder-forked 98cc two-speed two-stroke model. It was named the Vespa (‘wasp’ in Italian), thanks to the sound the exhaust made while running on the testbed in 1944. The MV 98 was publicly unveiled before pre-christmas crowds in central Milan in December 1945, and entered production the following spring, with 150 manufactured that year, the first of 7000 to be built over the next four years. After that, MV began to climb the capacity ladder, with the fourspeed 125 Turismo model debuting in 1949 alongside two different scooters powered by the same engine and four-speed transmission. MV also made off-roaders, with 125250cc MV Agusta Cross and
Regolarità enduro models winning races and titles up to the late ’60s, and competing successfully in the ISDT.
In 1949 Domenico decided instead to establish MV at the very top of the technical ladder by developing a luxury four-cylinder road bike which he deemed worthy of the Agusta name. To create this, he hired progettista Piero Remor away from his Gilera rivals 30km away, who brought with him a young mechanic named Arturo Magni. Magni would head up the MV Agusta race operation for the next 25 years, becoming adept at ensuring the mercurial Count Domenico’s high expectations were translated into reality – fast! By 1956 the only parts of the bikes that were boughtin were tyres, shocks, carburettors and magnetos.
Agusta fixed-wing aircraft manufacture restarted in 1950 and in May 1952 Domenico Agusta signed an agreement to manufacture the groundbreaking Bell Model 47 helicopter in Italy. This move not only brought the Agusta family significant wealth, but would also usher in leading-edge technology to Count Domenico’s MV Agusta race bikes, which were constructed using the same high-tech materials and techniques used in the manufacture of his helicopters right next door. Remor’s 500cc MV Agusta four was quite different to his long-stroke Gilera four-cylinder racer that would shortly win the 1950 world championship, though its dohc engine with gear cam-drive was externally similar. The MV’S ‘square’ 54 x 54mm dimensions were unusual for the time, as were the shaft final drive and torsion-bar rear suspension, with a distinctive parallelogram rear end aimed at countering the shaft drive’s torque reaction. However, with work on the street bike project well advanced, Count Agusta typically had a sudden change of mind and instructed Remor to turn the luxury roadster project with shaft final drive into a racer! It wasn’t the first time the impulsive aristocrat had switched direction and wrong-footed his race team, nor would it be the last...
The shaft-drive MV Agusta quattro debuted in the Belgian GP at speedy Spa in July 1950, finishing fifth in the hands of ex-gilera rider Arciso Artesiani, reputedly timed at 250kph through the speed traps – faster than the victorious Gileras. Artesiani’s podium finish in the 1950 Italian GP at Monza, run literally across the road from the Gilera factory, served notice that MV would be a force – especially with Count Domenico’s cheque book at the ready. He employed it to sign AJS’S 1949 world champion Les Graham for 1951 – the first of many British and Commonwealth riders who’d race for MV in the next quarter-century. Graham put his years of experience to good use, improving the bulky 500 MV’S handling by reworking the chassis to a more conventional duplex frame – albeit with an Earles fork, which Les convinced the Count to sanction. The all-new five-speed engine with chain final drive was also a comprehensive redesign for the 1952 season. In this guise, the redeveloped Quattro promised fulfilment of Count Agusta’s ambitions, with Graham second in the world championship after scoring MV’S debut 500GP victory right where it mattered – at
Monza, leading home Gilera’s future world champion Umberto Masetti In the Italian GP by almost a minute. This prompted Commendatore Gilera to lodge a protest, claiming the MV’S engine was oversize. (In his dreams...) A second win for Graham and MV in the next race, the season-ending Spanish GP at Montjuic, was icing on the cake.
Graham started as world championship favourite for 1953, but tragically lost his life in that year’s very first race, crashing at the bottom of Bray Hill at the start of the Senior TT. Rhodesian replacement Ray Amm was likewise killed on his debut MV ride at Imola in 1955. But another Englishman earned Agusta his first world title, when Cecil Sandford won the 1952 125cc World Championship on his MV single. In late 1955 Count Agusta signed the man who would transform MV Agusta’s 500GP fortunes with his skill, bravery and especially his technical expertise. John Surtees, then just 22, had already made a name for himself aboard the outpaced Norton singles, with 77 wins.
Surtees won the first three races of the six-round 1956 500GP series, including MV’S first-ever TT victory, to establish an unbeatable lead in the points table and win MV’S first 500cc World Championship.
Though Gilera fought back to regain the crown in 1957, thanks to plummeting Italian bike sales in the wake of that year’s debut of the Fiat 500 car, it joined 125/250cc double world champions Mondial and 350cc winners Moto Guzzi in withdrawing from racing for 1958. Agusta had originally agreed to join them in a retirement pact, but reneged on the deal once the others has agreed to quit!
This opened the door to successive years of MV GP victories against privateers mounted on ageing British singles, and that uninterrupted run of world titles for MV Agusta and John Surtees. He won a hat-trick of world championships from 1958-60 in both 350/500cc classes by winning 32 out of 39 races, while also becoming the first man to win the Senior TT three years in a row. He won every GP race he
started in 1958 and 1959, a total of 25 victories in succession.
Carlo Ubbiali registered a comparably dominant record in the smaller capacity classes, winning 37 GP races which led to six 125cc world titles and three 250cc crowns for MV Agusta, scoring double-up championships in 1956, 1959 and 1960 before retiring at the age of 30, while still in his prime. His departure prompted Count Agusta to pull out of the 125cc class for 1961, and a year later from the 250cc class, too.
But it wasn’t a happy team. “Count Agusta was essentially a massive snob,” said John Surtees. “He liked to create an aura around himself – everything he did was about increasing his social standing and self-esteem, and he seemed to enjoy making things difficult for you. He had to be the one who decided when anything should be discussed, so when the MV 500 really needed a new frame in 1958, the only way I could get to talk with him about that was by booking myself onto the same train as him back to Milan from Spa after the Belgian GP! Just as well I’d won both races that day, else he’d never have talked to me!”
When Surtees began car racing in 1960, he was replaced in 1961 by Rhodesian Gary Hocking, then by Mike Hailwood for 1962 – all without interrupting MV Agusta’s flow of world titles. But Domenico Agusta was thirsting for an Italian rider to continue MV’S winning ways – and in 1965 he found one in Giacomo Agostini, the 22 year-old winner of that year’s Italian 250cc Championship on the highrevving Morini single.
“I received a message that Count Agusta wished to speak with me,” recalls Ago. “So I make an appointment to meet him in his office in Cascina Costa at 4.30pm. I wait outside his office that afternoon and all evening, and finally at
‘HE WAS A MASSIVE SNOB. HE SEEMED TO ENJOY MAKING THINGS DIFFICULT FOR YOU’
10.30pm he see me. When I go inside it’s very dark, but a big room with all the trophies, and certificates on the wall. His desk is high up, so he looks down at me, like the priest in his church. ‘Who are you?’ he asks me. ‘I am Agostini,’ I say. ‘I want to race with your bike.’ ‘But my bike is a difficult one,’ he says. ‘Can you control my bike sufficiently? We must test.’ So I must go to Monza next day, and I arrive to see a line of traffic cones standing in the centre of the finishing straight before the boxes [pits]. I am already Italian champion, but he wants me to ride slalom on the MV quattro like I did before in gymkhanas when I was a child! The Count is laughing, but I must do this – then we talk about contract!”
In the 350cc class the elderly, overweight MV 350 four was no match for the lighter, faster Hondas. So, acting in great secrecy, Domenico Agusta commissioned Arturo Magni to develop a light, compact triple comprising MV’S 250 twin with an extra cylinder, which he reasoned would be hard to beat. Work began in May 1964, initially with the two-valve 250 as the basis, until Count Agusta came into the workshop one evening when the engine was apart, saw the inside of the cylinder head, and immediately told Magni to throw it away. He wanted a modern four-valve design!
The first time the new triple ever ran on a race track was in practice for the opening GP of the 1965 season at the Nürburgring, with one bike each for Hailwood and Agostini. The fact that both triples broke the oil pump drive in practice was perhaps only to be expected, in view of their lack of pre-race testing – but significantly, it was Ago’s bike that the MV mechanics concentrated on repairing, leaving Mike to start the 350 race on an older four.
For the first eight laps, Agostini sat behind world champion Redman’s Honda, before sweeping past and pulling away to give the MV-3 a dream debut victory, on his first ride for MV. He finished two-and-a-half minutes ahead of runnerup Hailwood (on the MV four), while Redman crashed trying to keep up. Domenico Agusta had been right, and instructed Magni to build a stretched 420cc version which beat Honda in the 500 class, too.
Agostini picked up where Mike Hailwood left off in terms of cranking out victories for Count Agusta – prompting Mike to move to Honda for two glorious seasons of competition between the ‘best of enemies’ on their very different machines.
In both 1966 and ’67, Mike won the 350 crown on Honda’s 297cc six, and Ago the 500 title on the enlarged MV-3.
Honda retired from racing after 1968, leaving MV and Agostini to cruise to untroubled victory more or less whenever they bothered to turn up. In his MV career Ago won 311 races, including 125 GP rounds and 10 Isle of Man TTS. He won 13 world championships and 18 Italian titles. However, production of MV Agusta road bikes was down to just 600 a year by 1970. Domenico had tried to revitalise the company’s image by launching the world’s first seriesproduction four-cylinder street bike in 1965. But just 124 examples of the curiously-styled 600 Turismo were ever built. Then Domenico sanctioned the shaft-drive 750 Sport, which enjoyed a healthy response when production began in 1970.
But he did not live to see the final days of the marque he created. On January 29, 1971, while accompanying the President of Finland on a visit to the Agusta plant, Count Domenico Agusta suffered a heart attack and died four days later in his Milan apartment, aged 63.
The Godfather of Grand Prix racing had left a glorious legacy of race track success behind him – albeit obtained in an unduly despotic manner. But thanks to him, some of the most glorious multi-cylinder motorcycles ever built were created, and for that future generations must thank him.