BENELLI 750/900 SEI
Are the Benelli triples overlooked and overpriced – or are they not? Steve Cooper tries to set the record straight.
Steve Cooper looks at one of our main road test subjects.
“Yeah, it’s okay but it’s really only a Honda CB500/4 with two more pots innit?” This is the normal response to Benelli’s 750/6 and one that immediately moves swiftly on to: “…and it’s nowhere near as good as the CBX1000/6 – now that’s what they should have done!” Which is fine and dandy if you aren’t a fan of Italian machinery and/or are a Honda lover, yet what’s missing from those two statements is a simple, seven-letter word – context. Grasp that and the world’s first, commercial, six-cylinder motorcycle makes a lot more sense.
The unquestionably gorgeous Benelli Sei was the product of almost paranoiac hair-pulling by the company’s new owner trying to drag a 60-year-old away from its past and get it looking to the future. Just like every other Italian motorcycle firm that had survived the rampant success of Fiat’s Cinquecento, Benelli’s glory days were on the wane as the 1970s dawned. Even if Jarno Saarinen on a Benelli 500 was beating Agostini hollow at Pesaro, the firm needed commercial motorcycles a lot more than it needed race wins. Win on Sunday, sell on Monday was a fine maxim… but only if you had bikes the public wanted to buy!
Italian motorcycle manufacturing had been hit badly in the 1960s by the arrival and unparalleled success of the Japanese machinery. Most of the homespun bikes were older designs harking back to late 50s and although they’d enjoyed steady development, nothing significant or new had been developed. Argentinian Alejandro de Tomaso was a former racing driver and businessman who’d made his mark in Europe launching the Pantera sports car in 1971 and then swiftly purchasing Benelli.
The firm’s previous headline machine had been the Tornado 650, a parallel-twin designed to beat the British at their own game. De Tomaso grudgingly allowed its production to continue, but recognised the concept was on borrowed time and the firm desperately needed a modern machine. His designers, engineers and stylists immediately set to and within 12 months delivered the jaw-dropping Sei. Without doubt Benelli borrowed from Honda, and why not? De Tomaso had a small motorcycle business to save from potential oblivion, so why make life more difficult than it needed to be?
The air-cooled six used the same bore and stroke of the Honda four along with the use of a Hy-vo chain for primary drive, but elsewhere there were strategic differences. Carburation was via a trio of
Dell’ortos married to bifurcated inlets each feeding a pair of cylinders. Even if the side-on profile looked Honda-esque in full frontal there was a key difference – the Benelli 6 was only some 28 millimetres wider than the Honda Four, thereby confirming the Latin superbike wasn’t simply cribbed from Honda.
The firm simply needed a media-grabbing, attention-seeking, ‘stop-the-press’ headline act and the Sei delivered… in spades! This is the context in which the 750/6 should be rightly judged.
Cosmetics were courtesy of Italian car stylists Ghia and the checklist of top-line names kept on flowing. Borrani aluminium wheel rims, Marzocchi forks and shocks and twin Brembo disc brakes delivered the goods, along with that show-stopping exhaust profile courtesy of six artistically angled Silentium exhausts. Nothing looked or, crucially, sounded like the Benelli Six.
It all looked well starred but it would be a full two years before the bikes actually reached customer rs yet, arguably, the wait was worthwhile. The Sei offered almost liquid power, sounded like nothin g else on the road, looked drop-dead gorgeous, and d was unquestionably the smoothest bike engine ever. There was even a dealer demonstration of balancing a 50p piece edgewise on the Sei’s fille er cap with the engine running and being revved – t the harmonics of a straight six meant the coin just stayed where it was.
Sadly a lacklustre dealer network, high purcha ase price and unfounded suspicion of Italian enginee ering did little to encourage sales. Only around 3000 750 Seis were made between 1974-78 and even n when significantly reworked as a 900 a year later r, only a further 2000 rolled off the production line e.
In reality the 5000 or so Benelli sixes were ne ever going to worry the might of the Japanese motorcy ycle industry and for many the bikes are little more th han a quirky footnote in the annals of motorcycle hist tory – unless you get the opportunity to ride one.
Yes, okay, there’re only two valves per pot and a single overhead cam under the tank, but try work king that motor. It pulls in a manner it really shouldn ’t, it’s a smooth as silk, delivers an exhaust note lik ke no other, and there’s not a hint of Italian histrionics s about it. Now hustle it through some bends, preferably with a CBX thou following behind. Rid de as hard as you like because that racing heritage was s lovingly poured into that chassis. Oh, has the Ho onda been left lagging? That, ladies and gents, is heritage… and context!
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