A Week with the Moto Guzzi California Vintage Street Cred without the “wannabe” Moto Guzzi has more “cruiser street cred” than the majority provide it credit for. They’ve been around continuously since 1921; longer than absolutely everyone but Harley Davidson. But for Harley Davidson, Guzzi’s been building cruisers longer than all people els – their first cruiser in the incarnation you notice above coming out in 1967 with the V700. Guzzi has usually liked how to get an indian phone number building “huge” bikes, however we must modify scale. Italy, which changed into Guzzi’s largest marketplace for most of it is life, had production street bikes with less than 100cc for many years – a motorbike above 300cc was considered “massive”.
Guzzi turned into at the top of the heap early on, with manufacturing 500cc bikes that had been dependable and carrying. The 500cc Falcone of the 50s is an splendid instance of this, a bike with splendid reliability, to the point where an American Guzzi Club member is an unique proprietor of two, each ridden on near a daily basis for extra than 50 years! Guzzi builds cruisers, and that they have built them for a protracted, long term. This isn’t any past due-comer, me-too, bandwagon cruiser, built to exploit a marketplace area of interest that came about from Harley-Davidson’s renaissance. Moto Guzzi toughed it out for years while groups with better resources and larger supplier networks walked all over them.
The component is, they in no way gave up, they never stopped constructing the platform, and they stayed proper to their assignment. The modern “cruiser” platform is constructed around the laterally-established V-twin motor (at first 700cc, now 1100), running through an in-line, vehicle-kind transmission immediately through to a power shaft and bevel-drive very last. After extra than forty years, it’s a tremendously refined machine. The motor may want to pleasant be described as a ” cylinder small-block, American V-eight?. This definitely isn’t a stretch. The cam is inside the vee, there is a traditional sump, it has a hemi-head with pushrods and rockers. It also makes gobs and gobs of torque, is insanely easy to paintings on, and is lifeless-nuts dependable.
The California Vintage is a celebration of this linage, from the primary V-twins, thru the Police Bike generation and up thru today. The first California regarded at the Eldorado platform, all white-pin-striped black with a white-trimmed “pal seat”. So what did Moto Guzzi do with this (arguments begin right here) most famous platform cruiser bike ever to come back from Europe? The second-oldest continuously built cruiser platform in existence? They continuously subtle it
The refinements are many. Brakes are sport-motorbike-wellknown Double Brembos inside the front and a single in the rear. The 1094cc engine has a clean, stumble-free injection machine. The exhaust meets the difficult Euro-3 standards, and the standard luggage are quality-of-breed massive and incorporated perfectly into the design. The seat is just simple candy. The windscreen has been examined to guarantee smooth drift across the rider. The suspension comes with a Marzocchi hydraulic telescopic fork with rebound and compression adjustability. The rear suspension is ubiquitous twin shock, with preload and compression adjustability. That Guzzi sound remains there. It feels like no other v-twin engine, unlike their more “me-too” cruiser late-comers. It’s sort of V-Twin, but more “small block”. Brings smiles with the aid of the bag load, and also you do not get into that “Harley patented their sound” communication. Unique is right. It seems like a actual, sincere-to-goodness, Magnum Force police motorbike. The Cal weighs in at approximately 560lbs, and it truely shows whilst the turns appear in front of you. You have a desire of 3 gears at any “happy velocity”.
The Engineers did not provide in to the drag-racing-slick-rear-tire appearance. It’s ALL Guzzi, and that means it’s no longer a Harley, Harley-clone, Harley-wannabe; Harley some thing. It’s the anti-Harley within the cruiser market. It’s the non-wannabe.
It’s the Cruiser Bike for someone that rides a number of sport motorcycles The mixture of suspension, brakes, dealing with and balance make this a bike for a non-cruiser-cruiser-buyer. Guzzi failed to give in to fads, it stuck to its ideas. No fats tires or huge cubic-inch motors; just now not needed. The Goose will honestly cross “fast sufficient” (Jim Barron of Rose Farm Classics claims well over 135mph).
