Tamburini’s last design made reality two years after his death.
Has any other motorcycle designer ever reached the heights of acclaim and fame as Massimo Tamburini? It’s easy to argue that the Bimota founder and former Ducati and MV design guru is the most celebrated man ever to come from the profession.
Now, two years after his death, there’s a bike that bears his name and is claimed to represent the last of his designs finally made into three-dimensional reality.
Called the Tamburini T12 Massimo and made by newly-formed firm Massimo Tamburini S.r.l, the bike certainly carries on the design language that started in the Ducati 916 and carried on with the MV Agusta F4. While it doesn’t move the goalposts like some of Tamburini’s designs, it’s still a thing of beauty.
And in the best Tamburini tradition, that beauty is more than skin-deep, as there’s innovative engineering to the chassis, too. Notably, the compound steel trellis and cast magnesium frame has a patented method for adjusting its rigidity. Adjustable frames were something that Tamburini had long championed – his Husqvarna STR650 concept of 2006 featured a similar idea.
Inside that frame lies a BMW S1000RR engine in full WSBK tune. The single Tamburini T12 built so far is a track-only machine that needs make no concessions to road use. It’s claimed to make in excess of 170kW. That’s close to GP bike power, and it’s stuffed into a bike that weighs just 154.5kg dry, so performance is likely to be in the ‘terrifying’ category.
Fortunately it has all the cycle parts that you’d expect on a machine with that potential. The Ohlins suspension and Brembo brakes are all GP-level parts, the wheels are forged magnesium and shod with Pirelli slicks. Magnesium is also the material of that swingarm, which might look familiar as it’s borrowed from an MV F4. On top of that there’s adjustable rake, trail and offset as well as a movable swingarm pivot point.
