Supersized P’
Thanks to the Italian tuning house of BFA Motori, Lambretta owners no longer have a monopoly on exotic big-block engines. Stan gets the inside story on their outrageous Vespa lump.
Thanks to the Italian tuning house of BFA Motori, Lambretta owners no longer have a monopoly on exotic big-block engines. Stan gets the inside story on their outrageous Vespa lump.
It's been a few years since lovers of high-performance Vespas were first teased with the prospect of a monster 306cc two-stroke motor that would drop into most largeframe Vespas. Surprisingly the motor was conceived at BFA Motori, an Italian tuning house better known for its exceptional smallframe motors. The brains behind BFA, Ale and Fabio, brought the motor to prototype stage but realised that if the engine was to enter production a partner with both retail and engineering experience was needed. The first casings arrived at SIP in late 2017 and it's thanks to the resulting partnership that the road-going BFA engine was born.
Workin’ for the man
Outside of BFA's workshops, there's probably no one on the planet with more experience of the 306 engine than Jesco Schmidt. For the past few years Jesco's been the product manager for SIP's Classic Vespa range, but he's far from being an office-bound ‘suit'. Standing over 6ft tall, Jesco's an unlikely scooter racer but he continues to enjoy considerable success in scooter sprinting. He's also an engineer of considerable talent and we'll follow up with some of his ‘off the books' projects in future editions.
For SIP, Jesco was the logical choice to work with BFA in transforming their prototype into a viable commercial product. The project was unveiled at SIP's 2019 open day in the form of a gorgeous custom-painted 71bhp sprinter. We told the story of how Jesco brought this machine from a concept into reality back in edition 397. It's an undeniably spectacular machine but as Jesco explained, the build left many unanswered questions. “This is one of SIP's flagship products and it was important to both Alex and Ralf (the founders and owners of SIP) that we understood what the experience of a customer would be. I also wanted to understand what the engine's ‘out of the box' performance would be. The answer was that I'd build my own engine, filming my progress from ordering the parts to testing it both on the road and on the racetrack.”
The first thing to understand about the motor is that there's no ‘plug and play' option. Instead SIP offers a series of ‘part bundles'. At the top end is the ‘tuning kit' which includes casings, crank, clutch and cylinder. Although a standard Piaggio gearbox could be fitted, the forces generated by the motor are such that SIP recommends fitting either a Series Pro or DRT item. These too are available as bundles, with ratios suitable for touring and sprinting. For those with extreme performance in mind the casings can also be purchased as a shell to which liquid or air-cooled barrels can be mated.
It's because of this mix-and-match approach that it's difficult to pin an exact price on the BFA but thinking of it as the Vespa equivalent of a Targa Twin or Casa SSR is reasonable both in terms of scarcity and price.