First Time Lucky?

It's ironic that the first all-new MV Agusta model to hit the marketplace right after Italy's No.1 trophy brand was acquired by Austrian giant Pierer Mobility, owner of off-road titans KTM, should be the company's first dual-purpose model of the modern era, powered by MV's all-new 931cc three-cylinder engine that's destined to form the basis of a whole series of new models in coming months and years.

- Alan Cathcart

MV AGUSTA ENDURO VELOCE

For this was the motorcycle that Stefan Pierer himself told me last June, after he'd purchased an initial 25.1 per cent slice of MV Agusta from its then-owners, that in his opinion MV should not be making! "Adventure bikes are a big market sector, but they're also the most difficult segment, and the most competitive to be present in," he told me. "Nobody is waiting for such a model from MV Agusta."

Yet, six months later at last November's EICMA Milan Show, the MV Agusta stand saw the renewed unveiling of what had been called the Lucky Explorer 9.5 when the covers first came off it two years earlier. Now redubbed the MV Agusta Enduro Veloce, and with the benefit of two further years of development in the company's CRC R&D base in San Marino, now itself renamed MV Agusta Centro Stile, the bike the boss didn't want built has entered production and is available at MV dealers around the world. Maybe that's happened simply because too much money had already been invested in it for it to be terminated, the very same reason that McKinsey pundit Tue Mantoni was prevented from cancelling the 675 Daytona project when he was appointed Triumph's Commercial Director in 2003 and wanted to turn the brand into a British Harley-Davidson. Tipping wads of cash down the drain by binning a project in which so much time and money had already been invested is likely to have sat just as badly with Stefan Pierer as with Triumph owner John Bloor and look how well JB's decision to gainsay Mantoni and build the iconic 675 Daytona paid off!