Laverda
"1973: Télépoche, a French TV listings magazine regularly featured a motorbike centrefold. Although at the time I followed the fashion of the Japanese bikes, the centre spread photograph of one of the very first 1000 LAVERDA came as a shock! What lines and moreover, what a monumental engine! Even before the try-out it smacked of sheer power and brutality, yet the engine was aesthetically very sharp and the casting of a then unrivalled finesse. Such was the strikingly apparent paradox of this magnificent motorbike. The press would rightly say later on that it no doubt represented for motorbikes what the Lamborghini were for cars. It was the result of the combined efforts of daring manufacturers and designers as regards aesthetics and mechanics, even though the production of the family firms that masterminded all this had initially little to do with sport (both makes manufacturing agricultural equipment).
http://www.wheelsofitaly.com/v2/us/en/assets/id/body/slideshows/woi2004show/500/6/014.jpg
A little later, I tried out a 750 SF of the same make. The impression of power was admittedly less distinct, but I had rediscovered the beauty of the engine, a high reliability and above all, an outstanding character. Like most motorbike enthusiasts of that time, I also couldn't forget the sporting achievements of these big twins of the early seventies, that fierce and often victorious battle between the small family firm from Breganze and the might of the large Japanese factories.
It didn't take more than that for me to quickly and instinctively become a fanatic of the make. I couldn't try out such-and-such a bike without comparing it to Breganze's twins or triples, which, no doubt eliminated any hint of objectivity I might still have…. The motorbike in question might well have had 4 cylinders, 16 valves and a red zone of over 10, 000 revs, but all that seemed rather dull to me next to the sensations granted and the growl exuded by the Laverda engine, to the detriment of any notion of comfort, it is true to say.
So welcome to this website, dedicated to a family which, somewhere in the north of Italy, near to Venice, was able to create an identity that still unites today all the followers of the make with the green, white and red emblem with gold-edged lettering…"