To The Crusher - Bimota V-Due

On paper it looked fantastic and had grown men rubbing their loins against glossy pictures in bike mags: a fuel-injected 500cc, two-stroke making 110bhp and weighing in at 145 kilos (319lbs).

Added to the Grand prix spec sheet were snaky twin spannies, three-spoke cast wheels, a moulded one piece tank and tail unit and Italian styling to die for. Shame the Bimota V-Due was such a bag of shite.
The concept was extremely ambitious to say the least. When Honda abandons attempts to build a fuel-injected 500 two-stroke (remember Shinichi Itoh on the racing NSR?), it's safe to say it's unlikely to work. Undeterred, relatively tiny firm Bimota put its reputation - and bank balance - on the line and unleashed the V-Due upon an expectant world in 1998. Bad move.

Within 200 yards it became apparent to most UK testers that the V-Due was virtually unrideable. With a powerband of little more than 1,500rpm, Michael Flatley couldn't have danced on the gear shift fast enough. Even when he swapped his Dainese race boots for tap shoes, the gearbox ratios weren't close enough to allow the bike to be kept in its Kate Moss-thin powerband and Flatley would have gone home in a huff.

The £14,500 V-Due also had a tendency to misfire and its engine hunted like a Jurassic Park game warden on half-throttle. And it fouled plugs. Lots of them. One well-known millionaire lottery-winning owner was once given a bag of spark plugs by the importers when he complained. The thing just didn't work man.
Bimota was forced to concede the point and recalled all bikes sold - not many. The firm then released a carburated version which was slightly better but down on power. The damage to the bike's reputation had already been done. It was the last straw for the Italian firm. Seldom has so much cash been invested in such a pig of a bike. Sadly for motorcycling, when the V-Due went spluttering to the crusher, one of the most famous names in biking went with it and Bimota was no more.

But hats off to the boys for having the bollocks to try and build what could have been the closest thing to a 500cc GP bike for the road. What a pisser it didn't work.

Faltering, farting, spluttering, evil stroker twin - off to the crusher with you and reveal not your tempting lines and thoroughly shite engine ever again.