Tour of the Moto Morini Factory
May 2, 1989
When my friend Thierry Castro and I realized that we were both going to be in Europe at the same time, we decided to plan a rendezvous at the Moto Morini factory in Bologna. Several contacts and phone calls later, we had a date to tour the factory.
Besides Thierry and me, Thierry's girlfriend Carrie Christopher and Peter Konietzny (of the Morini Club Deutschland) were included in the tour group.
The day before, I had ridden the Laverda SF750 down from Mr Pompone's in San Liberale. A nasty short had kept me replacing fuses in the thing until I found a 500 L. coin would do the trick just fine -- but that's another story!
Upon arrival at the factory, we amused ourselves in the lobby, gawking at the GP250 racer (with a dimple in its gas tank for Provini's chin), and the aborted 500 Turbo. Finally, a chief draftsman named Paolo arrived to begin our tour.
We entered the high school gym sized work room, where (aside from design and storage) pretty much the whole operation takes place. Even the machine tools had a Moto Morini plate! Paolo had seen our interest in the old race bike out front, and he took us to the spare engine for it on the bench. Of the two GP250 racers still around, Cesare Luzzi in Siena has one, and the other is at the factory.
En route to the basement where the test room was, we saw a 350 Dart being driven around the "test track", in fact the factory parking lot. Once down below, we spied the not-then-released 900 Supersports from Ducati on the test bench. What a sound!
After checking in Thierry and Carrie at the hostel, we had Pasta Bolognese in the Old Town and took pictures of each other in front of various local specimens of Morini.
Next day, we photo'd the Laverda and T's Camel side by side at the hostel, and parted ways. All in all a fun trip!
