TEMPTATION
If it’s red and Italian you’re looking for…
£1200-1800 est Guzzi Cardellino »
Europe’s current best seller? BMW R1250GS. Rewind 75 years and it was Moto Guzzi’s tiddly Motoleggera 65. Introduced in ’46 and known as the ‘Guzzino’, the two-stroke single only weighed 45kg and was Europe’s biggest selling bike for a decade. The Cardellino was the replacement in the mid-50s, using the same 65cc motor but with super-cool friction-damped rear suspension to go with the double-wishbone front end. This one was running when parked up in 2019, has a NOVA reference for registering and would be perfect for some two-up summer evening shenanigans.
£1200-2200 est Itom Super Sport »
Imagine your cheeks shoved back on the seat, chin pinned to the top yoke and ears bleeding from the expansion chamber exhaust. Turin-based firm Industria Torinese Meccanica started making 50cc two-strokes for speed-mad teens in the 1950s, with names like Super Sport and Competizione. You could even buy a race kit with Dell-orto carb, highcomp head and chrome-bore barrel, making the Competizione good for 70mph. This SS doesn’t go that fast as it needs restoring, but it’s original and only shows 5642 kilometres.
£900-1300 est Gilera Giubileo »
Gilera ruled grands prix in the 1950s, taking five manufacturer and six rider titles. Their best-selling road bikes in the 50s and 60s were all tiddlers though, with 98, 150 and 175cc singles. This Giubileo (‘jubilee’, a name introduced in 1959 to mark Gilera’s 50th anniversary) is from circa 1960 with the 98cc, 6bhp four-stroke. Cosmetically restored, it has no paperwork, not much compression, and has been ‘scramblerised’ – it didn’t leave the factory like this. But we don’t care because it’s super-affordable and looks blinkin’ glorious.
£2400-3400 est MV Agusta 125 »
If your teen has managed to drag themselves off Snapchat for long enough to notice bikes, you could buy them a new Yamaha YZF-R125 for just under £5k. They’d be chuffed and the bike would be faultless. Then again, you could save two or three grand by bidding on this MV Agusta 125 Sport instead, leaving plenty to get this partiallyrestored 12,000-kilometre example finished and registered. Launched in 1975, the four-stroke single with electronic ignition has a claimed 14bhp and 75mph top speed, plus Ceriani front forks – and this one has the optional fairing too.
£1000-1500 est Caprioli 75 »
It needs a bit of finishing, has no documents, but for a grand it’s worth buying as an ornament. It’s also a bit unusual as it’s a Caprioli. The firm was set up by Aero-caproni, a large Italian aircraft builder founded in the early 1900s who turned their hand to bikes after WW2. Starting out with a prototype based on Ducati’s Cucciolo moped, the 75cc bikes introduced in the 1950s used a four-stroke overhead-cam single with a fourspeed gearbox, housed in an advanced pressed steel wraparound frame. (The 75cc competition bikes had desmodromic valve gear, too.)
£1400-1800 est Moto Morini Sport »
Prices for Morini’s sweet three-and-a-half are rising, making this bike’s sub-£2000 estimate look very appealing. A later bike from 1980, there’s no paperwork with it and it’s not run for a couple of years, however the clocks show a believable 29,000 miles and it appears original (except for some ‘tidying up’ with frame paint and new pipes). So that means Marzocchi forks, Ceriani shocks, Veglia clocks, and of course Morini’s delightful 72˚ V-twin with flat ‘heron’ heads and the combustion chambers in the pistons.