The magazine for classic Japanese motorcycles

Hello Moto

True, in those days Italian import tariffs were artificially keeping the Big Four at bay and, I suspect, the government was also giving them tax breaks and employment subsidies that basically enabled them to carry on producing weird little V-twins that were outclassed in almost every area that mattered to young speed fiends such as I, but you couldn’t help but admire their chutzpah.

I visited the factory a few times, too, and was always met by the redoubtable if gracious Gabriella Morini, daughter of founder Alfonso Morini, who ran the place: not something that’d happen in Hamamatsu. And in 1980 I was even allowed a clandestine ride on the prototype Morini Turbo which was one of the more frightening experiences of my life, primarily because force-feeding a V-twin is a tricky business to get right – look at the lengths Honda went to with the CX500 – if you wanted it devoid of horrendous levels of lag... which the wee Morini wasn’t. I could only ride the turbike around the confines of the Bologna factory, and confines is the right word because that basically meant a poorly Tarmac’d lane around the place and a bit of dodging in and out of the basement bike park. Which on a bike that suddenly and rather unpredictably produces 80-odd horsepower after nothing much at all, proved a little taxing even for my rarefied levels of throttle control and anger management.

But like Laverdas, Ducatis and, to a lesser extent, the Guzzis of their day, the conventionally aspirated Morini V-twins were a visceral ride that rewarded rider input with handling and roadholding that was unambiguous yet suitably spirited. Although some Morini purists pooh-pooh it for its allegedly inferior robustness and relative lack of extra grunt compared with the 350, the 500 tested in this month’s issue was in fact my favourite because while it may not have had much more top end than its smaller sibling, it wasn’t so frantic in the manner with which it delivered the pasta.

The basics of the Morini engine, e.g. its belted camshaft, push-rodded Heron heads
and dry clutch, were distinctive and effective, and while their performance was equal to or bettered many contemporary Japanese machines, they could not match them on price.

And then there was that wrong sided kick-start which after the battery was a couple of months old became the default method of firing it up, and footrest location – which led to expensive chiropractory bills for anyone over 5ft 5in. There were ways around this of course: aftermarket rear-set kits and higher handlebars were
available and one could remove and charge the battery overnight. But this is not what one expected of a £2000 motorcycle in 1983, especially if you fancied an Italian V-twin of similar capacity and performance, for a Moto-Guzzi V50 Monza cost 200 quid less.

Oddly enough, the Morini trailbikes were not only ergonomically superior to their
roadster V-twins but even compared favourably to some Japanese equivalents.

The XT500 featured on p22 was still the yardstick half-litre trailie when Morini’s 500cc competitor was launched in 1981, but it weighed more and produced less power. However, christening it the Camel didn’t help in English-speaking markets where after much guffawing among cynical old hacks (including yours truly, naturally) it was hastily rebadged as the Sahara.

The 350cc, almost as unflatteringly called the Kanguro, was if anything a better bike than either the XT or the Sahara as it had almost as much torque, a little less weight and for reasons of gearing and cam-timing was the comfier bike on the road at post-70mph cruising speeds. And even as late as the late-noughties when I was still actively mud-plugging myself, there were certain doughty individuals entering clubman enduros on Kanguros and acquitting themselves tolerably well.

Of course such antics never occurred to me in the days when Morini was still something of a player because I liked sub-200cc two-stroke trailies that one could throw around with abandon, or unceremoniously drop and still pick up as was more often the case, and once again the XT500 was out of the question in this respect – although I did have one on long term loan during that long, hot summer of 1976 which proved to be quite an amusement. But not in a good way.

At the time I was renting a large converted mill in mid-Wales which became party central for various ne’er-do-wells who’d pop down from London and avail themselves of the facilities, and the XT was frequently taken ‘out for a spin’ around the nearby woods by people who’d never really ridden a bike before, often in a state of... erm... enhanced consciousness. The net result of which was one broken wrist, one broken arm and a very battered XT500 which I had to keep going out and kicking back into life for those who never mastered the knack. Which of course would’ve never happened on a Morini... or at least one with a new battery.

Words: Mark Williams
Photo: Mortons Archive