A BRIEF HISTORY
Gori was originally formed as a company in Florence in 1927 by a very proud Italian, Giancarlo Gori, who built his own machines featuring other manufacturers’ engines with the Gori badge standing proud on the fuel tank. The brand would appear with some success in road racing before a more serious move into motorcycle production started in 1968. Originally founded by his father, it was a second-generation Giancarlo Gori who manufactured machines from 1968 to 1983 at his official manufacturing company Officina Meccanica Gori, Piazza di San Salvi, Firenze, Italy. The prelude to manufacturing his own motorcycles in the mid-60s led Giancarlo Gori to be associated with another Italian motorcycle enthusiast, and their modified machines were marketed as Gori-Bimm. He was also involved with various other scooter companies, including Vespa and their various racing activities, including speed record attempts, with some success.
By the time the new Gori trials machine was presented to the public at the Milan show in the December of 1979, the donor brand SWM already had a lot of experience with the air-cooled two-stroke Rotax engines. They had already introduced them to the off-road world, and it continued to achieve much success. Gori wanted to carry this into the world of trials. So it presented its red-and-white trials model at the Milan show in late 1977, which proved very popular.
GORI TRIALS
As SWM introduced a new yellow-model range in 1980, Giancarlo Gori and Signor Sironi used the previous year’s trials models, the red-andwhite ones, to introduce the new green Gori trials model.
The Gori name was an asset to their company portfolio and kept the name alive. During this period, it decided to increase machine sales by rebranding its older SWM range of machines, selling them as the new green Gori model. Doing so could open up another market to increase machine sales, aimed at another type of customer who wanted something different. In reality, it was the SWM machine, but the tubular steel frame now had a black finish and swinging arm, complemented by a green steel fuel tank and matching plastics in the same colour. Again, it was a case of copy and paste as in every area of the machine, you could find the SWM signature, but this new Gori model would be named the MT 325.
On the Milan Show model and in the early promotional pictures, the SWM name had been removed from the engine’s side cases, but it soon reappeared on the production models.
The heart of the new Gori trials model was the 250cc Rotax engine that SWM had decided to develop for trials use. It was similar to the enduro engine, which used a 72mm bore, so they over-bored it to 76mm, which pushed the engine size up to 276.6cc. The first trials machine arrived in early 1980, and the well-known Cheshire Centre-based national rider David Hooke gave the machine its UK competition debut at the 1980 St David’s National Trial in Wales. During the 1981 season, 125cc, 200cc and 250cc machines were added to the trials model range.
At the end of 1983, the Italian SWM Company finally closed its doors and with it would also be the end of the Gori dream.