Contents
Career [ edit ]
Galluzzi is a third generation motorcyclist [ 4 ] whose first motorcycle was a 1959 Kreidler Florett 50 he received for his eighth birthday, a present that disappointed him at first because, said Galluzzi, his head was 100 percent into music at the time and he wanted a drum set to become like Charlie Watts. though the bike changed the direction of his life. [ 9 ] Because Galluzzi is 6ft 6in (1.98m) tall, many of his best known creations with low seat heights and high foot pegs, like the Monster and Raptor naked bikes, are better suited to their target buyer than their designer. [ 10 ]
In 2012, Galluzzi relocated from Piaggio’s headquarters in Pisa to Pasadena, California to lead the company’s new Advanced Design Center. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] The California location follows other branches in China, India, Italy and Vietnam, which work with the main Piaggio Group Style Center, run by Director Marco Lambri. [ 15 ] Galuzzi chose the Pasadena location, because of its proximity to centers of transportation thought, namely the Art Center College of Design, California Institute of Technology. and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [ 15 ] Galuzzi said he is, looking for the next form of mobility, five to fifteen years into the future, and he will be, hiring young and creative and crazy people, at the new design center to do, experiments that might offer a rethinking or a melding of recent mobility concepts. [ 15 ] Piaggio and Galuzzi hope to bring a more cosmopolitan perspective than is possible working only in Italy, and branch out to such areas as electric vehicles that combine aspects of a motorcycle and a car, like the Renault Twizy and Audi Urban Concept. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] The Daily Telegraph ‘ s Kevin Ash said, with the Piaggo Group’s total US sales, including Aprilia and Vespa. at only 10,000 units in 2011, the new center must also be aimed to bolster sales in that market. [ 17 ]
Motorcycle designs [ edit ]
The first work Galluzzi did at Cagiva for Ducati was on the 900 Supersport. [ 14 ] While most of the early models of Ducati’s Cagiva period are poorly remembered, and the 1990 900 Supersport suffered flaws like splitting fuel tanks, the visually and mechanically revised 1991 900 Supersport, offered in full- and half-fairing versions, became a classic, somehow finding the necessary balance between honoring the tradition set by the Super Sport models of the 1970s loved by the Ducati faithful, yet still looking modern and up to date. [ 18 ] The Supersport line had a successful eight year run that included many sub-models, ranging 400–800cc (24–49cuin). [ 18 ] [ 19 ]
Monster [ edit ]
The Monster began as a styling exercise in 1992. The concept for the Monster was one Galluzzi had been thinking about for some time, [ 20 ] and it took time to convince the management at Cagiva and Ducati to build it. [ 12 ] Ducati technical director Massimo Bordi originated the idea for what they wanted the new bike to accomplish, [ 21 ] and assigned the design to Galluzzi.
Bordi said he asked Galluzzi for something which displayed a strong Ducati heritige but which was easy to ride and not a sports bike. He came up with a propopsal and I thought, this was the bike Marlon Brando would be riding today in the film The Wild One ! [ 22 ] Bordi’s intent was to enter the cruiser market, [ 8 ] with a bike that was made to be modified and would eventually have a wealth of bolt-on aftermarket accessories rivaling the range of custom and hot-rod parts available for Harley-Davidsons. [ 20 ] [ 23 ] Previously Cagiva had attempted to move into this market with a more blatant Harley-Davidson cruiser imitation, the heavily chromed Ducati Indiana of 1986–1990. It made poor use of Ducati’s desmodromic valve L-twin engines; and a full-cradle frame, not Ducati’s signature trellis. played against Ducati’s stylistic strengths. [ 19 ] Only 2,138 were made over four years. [ 19 ] Avoiding another embarrassment competing directly against Harley-Davidson with a banal imitation of the Harley cruiser, the Monster appealed to the same urban, style-conscious buyers who wanted a bike that could make an individualistic statement, but it did so with a motorcycle that they had not quite seen before, and was still unmistakably Italian and a Ducati. [ 24 ] [ 25 ]
Because Bordi wanted Galluzzi to keep costs low, [ 22 ] the Monster was a humble parts bin special, built not with newly designed components carefully engineered to work in unison, but by mixing and matching parts from existing Ducati models, beginning with the engine and forward half of the frame of a 900 Supersport, [ 12 ] a frame descended from the 851 superbike. [ 26 ] and the fork of a 750 Supersport. [ 18 ] Galluzzi penned a muscular fuel tank and minimalist bodywork that produced a visual impression of mass and strength, on a motorcycle that turned out to be surprisingly tiny and agile to the first time rider. [ 12 ] Motorcycle Consumer News design columnist Glynn Kerr described the Monster’s statement as aggressive, attributable to the head-down, charging bull stance. [ 27 ]
While the standard motorcycle is as old as the motorcycle itself, and many bikes have been retro homages to simpler machines of the past, at least since the Moto Guzzi 1000S of the 1980s, [ 28 ] the Monster was both retro [ 29 ] and a whole new approach. [ 30 ] It was also a smash hit, [ 28 ] and the timing of its release was perfect, [ 18 ] creating one of the most imitated styles of the 1990s and 2000s. [ 29 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] [ 33 ] [ 34 ] Glynn Kerr ranked the Monster as 9th on his list of the 10 best motorcycle designs of all time, saying it has all it needs and no more, and that the several imitators, like Galluzzi’s own later Cagiva Raptor or Yamaha’s BT1100 Bulldog. always come in a poor second. [ 35 ]
The Monster might never have gone beyond the styling exercise stage had British reporter Alan Cathcart not ridden the bike at the factory and fallen in love with it, and then enthusiastically written about it in motorcycling magazines around the world. [ 23 ] Cautious of the new model’s sales prospects, Ducati initially planned to make only 1,000 units, but after the debut at the Intermot at Cologne in October 1992 the media’s and public’s excitement prompted increasing the number to 5,000. [ 12 ] It was also the media and public at the Cologne show who prompted Anglicizing the Italian Il Mostro to Monster. [ 12 ] The Monster line has had numerous variations over the years, from entry level 400cc (24cuin) bikes up to top of the line 130hp (97kW) multivalve. water-cooled superbike-engined versions, with as many as nine different Monster versions in a single model year. [ 36 ] The Monster’s elemental simplicity has also made it a favorite platform for custom motorcycle builders, showcased at competitions like the Monster Challenge. [ 7 ] [ 37 ] Besides innumerable minor variations, Galluzzi’s Monster design was not significantly restyled for 15 model years, until the cautiously updated Monster 696 of 2008. [ 38 ]
Later motorcycles [ edit ]
After the Monster, Galluzzi designed the 1997 Ducati ST2. As the Monster had opened up a new market outside the road racing derived sport bike segment, so too did the ST2 widen Ducati’s range by expanding the company’s offerings into the realm of sport touring. [ 39 ] Industrial designer Andrew Serbinski found Galluzzi’s first generation Ducati ST design to be ill-proportioned, with the fuel tank too large, suggesting a better design would be more aerodynamic and more true to the traditional Ducati values of compactness, the feel of motion at speed and sense of exotica. [ 40 ]
Next was the Cagiva Planet Baby Monster [ 41 ] of 1998, a variant of the Mito. [ 4 ] followed by the 1999 Raptor and V-Raptor, [ 4 ] [ 42 ] which used a Suzuki engine shared by the TL1000. and intended as a direct competitor to Galluzzi’s own Monster. [ 26 ] Galluzzi’s description of the engine choice was that, We had engines from all over the world, but the best two were Triumph’s Speed Triple three and the Suzuki TL1000. Both engines had soul and character but eventually we decided on the Suzuki engine. [ 10 ] Early testers were terrified at the 135hp (101kW) prototype. Galluzzi said that, the bike felt as if it was permanently out of control. It was fun! [ 10 ] This prompted increasing the head angle from 23 to 25 degrees, and increasing the wheelbase from 1,390 to 1,440mm (55 to 57in), creating, neutral handling but still [having] all the excitement of the original bike, along with tuning the exhaust and airbox to increase torque under 10,000rpm at the expense of 35hp (26kW) less peak output. [ 10 ] The result was a bike that was both bonkers and useable. [ 43 ]
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