22nd March, 2001.
In March 2001 in the wake of massive debts, an Italian Court, after many postponments finally closed the company and declared Bimota officially bankrupt. This ended 25 years of producing some of the most beautifully expensive and desirable bikes in the world.
The ill-fated 2 stroke V-Due and hub centre steered Tesi models were very expensive mistakes for such a small company, which ultimately brought about it’s downfall. Laverda people woulld also have poor memories of Mr. Tognon’s involvement in their company which suffered the same fate.
2 Buy-Out bids, one by the U.S. Bimota Importers, MotoPoint and another by a French consortium continued until they were ended by the court’s decision on closure. Any remaining stocks are expected to be sold off along with the rest of the company’s assets in an attemt to satisfy creditors.
30th March, 2001 – Italian law allows a company to be saved for a period after bankruptcy is declared. Apparently Bob Smith of MotoPoint is trying to exploit this to buy Bimota from the Court/Reciever and offerng to take it up lock stock and barrel and keep production in Rimini.
They see the SB8K as a current model that could be developed to be a part of Bimota’s future along with some new models.
Bimota, the factory and model range.
Bimota was a small scale Italian motorcycle manufacturer, based in Rimini. The factory was founded by Massimo Tamburini, later to be the architect of the Ducati 916 and MV Agusta F4.
They were mainly known as a company that puts other peoples engines in their own superb frames. That coupled with the Dogs Bollx of equipment has resulted in real head turning bikes that truly perform on the road.
Their bikes have featured engines from all 4 of the Japanese manufacturers and from Ducati, all tuned by Bimota to get that bit more out of them.
Nearly all of the models use Bimota’s 2 letter codes – DB for Ducati engined, HB – Honda, KB – Kawasaki, SB – Suzuki and YB for Yamaha.
Exceptions have been their version of Ducati’s Supermono.
V-Due
1998 saw Bimota launch it’s first bike with a Bimota engine – the little 500 V-Due.
Aluminium beam frame, housing a 500cc 2 stroke V twin. The engine has direct fuel injection, and a 12:1 compression ratio. With all this it delivers an awesome 105bhp in a bike that weighs 145Kg (no mis-print!). No other bike can match that power to weight ratio.
It weighs about the same as Aprilia’s RS250 but with almost the same power as a Kawasaki ZXR750! – It’s very much a race bike for the road.
Priced at UKp 14,000 it’s not cheap, but this bike truly delivers. The bad news in the UK is that only 60 made it into the country
