The axis of the engine was transverse to the frame, to easily fit a chain final drive as in the ordinary motorcycles (more practical and causing no power transmission troubles). The new machine featured eight cylinders arranged in two blocks of four, angled at 90 degrees. The four-cylinder model was scrapped at the end of that season and work started on a highly unorthodoxengined mount, which was later to be known as the 'V-8”. We must start with a clean sheet of paper and design a new multicylinder job.”Īnd so it was. The four is beastly to ride and it’s now useless to make any more efforts trying to improve the single. Carcano said to his assistant: 'That’s too much. Carcano registered for curiosity the lap times of that rider: these were far better than the ones set up by the Moto Guzzi riders who negotiated that bend (and all the others) with perfect technique, flat out to the limit! Surprised by this ascertainment, Ing. Carcano’s attention was attracted by a rider on a four-cylinder machine who was making a big riding mistake while negotiating the bend and, even worse, didn’t show any sign of improvement with the passing laps.

Carcano still had much faith in the “single lunger” and had already made many plans to improve it for the next season.

Carcano and his team of brilliant assistants, although excellent on twisty courses, lacked the top speed necessary to challenge the Gilera and M.V. On the other hand, the second racing model fielded by the Mandello del Lario factory, the horizontal “single” developed through the years by Ing. Giannini of Rome (also responsible for the pre-war “Rondine,” later to become the Gilera 500cc four) was proving unreliable and difficult to ride, especially on twisty going, because of the notorious torque reaction common to shaft drive bikes. That year hadn’t been a very good one for Moto Guzzi in the 500cc class: the four-cylinder in line with indirect injection and shaft drive, designed two years before by Ing. Giulio Cesare Carcano, the valiant chief of the Moto Guzzi experimental and racing department since pre-war days, was watching the 500cc class riders practicing for the 1954 Italian Grand Prix on a fine September day. QUIETLY SEATED in the meadow near the famous “parabolic” bend of the Monza autodrome, Ing.

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Moto guzzi v8