Museum director and trials genius Sammy Miller owns one of the rarest motorcycles on the planet in his 1956 500cc V8 Moto Guzzi, but he refuses to be precious about this marvel of Italian creativity.
When BSN asked him if he was going to ride the bike or just display it at the CRMC’s Donington Festival on August 9-11, he replied: “What a silly question! Ride it, of course. All our bikes work and are used.”
The 79-year-old multi-tasker - trials and enduro rider, road racer, collector and restorer - has selected the V8, and a 1951 500cc V-twin Moto Guzzi, from the hundreds of bikes at his museum in New Milton, Hampshire, to be among the stars at the CRMC’s showcase event.
It’s the extraordinary V8 that most visitors will want to see and hear. Can you imagine the soaring vision of the bike’s creator, Giulio Carcano, when he envisioned in the mid-fifties a motorcycle with an engine layout more synonymous with 7-litre Detroit musclecars? Not only did Carcano’s team draw up an engine with a 44 x 41mm bore and stroke, but they shoehorned eight 21mm magnesium-bodied Dell‘Orto carburettors into the 90-degree angle between the two banks of cylinders. Then they added water cooling and double overhead cams, driven by a train of gears. And this was done decades before CAD/CAM was available to aid designers and engineers!
“The Moto Guzzi V8 is the most exotic classic bike in the world,” Sammy proudly proclaims. “It raced in the 1957 Belgian grand prix when I finished second in the 250cc race on a Mondial. At nine o’clock one night they set to to change an engine, and the bike was completed at 4am. Like the rest of the world, I was flabbergasted by the V8.”
The Australian Keith Campbell set a new lap record of 118.14mph in that race on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, beating a mark previously held by a four-cylinder Gilera, and was leading until he retired with a broken battery lead. In its two seasons of competition in 1956-57 the Guzzi never won a grand prix, and at the end of that season the factory pulled out of racing before the bike could be fully developed.
Racing enthusiasts continue to be intrigued by this enigmatic machine. It developed 79bhp at 12,500rpm in its heyday, but would spin to 16,000rpm. The late 350cc world champion Bill Lomas once said of the V8: “This was the greatest machine ever made! It was years ahead of its time and faster than anything else around.
“If Moto Guzzi had kept going after 1957, things would have been different. In the 1960s Honda would have had to build something better than their four, and the MV triple would have struggled against the V8.”
Now Sammy Miller gives us the chance to see and hear the V8, and to reflect on what it might have achieved.
The CRMC event will also feature a unique Honda spectacle - more of the 297cc six-cylinder racers than the company ever put on the track at one time in the sixties. Engineer George Beale, who has created a remarkable eight replicas of the Honda RC174, believes that the factory only ever fielded two at one time.
Three of his bikes will be ridden at Donington, two by their owners Dennis Bunning and Peter Fox, while a third will be shared by Beale’s development rider John Cronshaw and by French engineer Julien Charnolet, who helped Beale to re-create the twin-cam, 24-valve, six-carburettor engines. Warning: take ear protectors if you plan to go near the sixes - they’re possibly the loudest racing bikes ever made.
Four John Player Nortons will also appear to mark the 40th anniversary of Peter Williams’ success in the 1973 F750 TT. “We want to make sure that the bikes are the stars,” said Donington manager Bob Adams. “It will also be a cheap and affordable weekend - the entry ticket will allow you to go everywhere.”
On the Friday visitors will be able to tour the modern-day Norton factory at Donington, and even take a test ride on the 961 Commando (contact the factory first at via their website). Forty CRMC races will be held during the weekend, 30 clubs will present around 300 machines from around the world at a bike show organised by the VJMC, and with classic and vintage grass-track racing, plus Donington’s Wheatcroft museum, it will be hard for spectators to take in everything even if they spend the whole weekend there.
The festival will raise money for Fisher House, which provides accommodation for the families of injured military personnel treated at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham. Sidecar racer Colin Seeley is organising the fund-raising though his Joan Seeley Memorial Trust.
Come and see Bikesport News at Donington, next to Davida, across from the main show area. There's a £500 Shoei X-Spirit II to be won...
