twin-cylinder road models in the 1960s and 1970s, they were
nothing like the 300B.Back to the future
The man known simply as Mr. Elli is universally recognized
as a savior of MV history and the visionary who brought most
of it back to life again. Ubaldo Elli died last year, but he,
American Robert Iannucci (of Team Obsolete) and Britain’s
John Surtees were the main buyers of MV heritage when the
famous race shop was sold off in the 1980s.
Mr. Elli spent the next few decades turning his collection
into a running museum that toured the world, often with
some of the original racers in the saddle. He also took on thehardest job: rebuilding the MV 300B, which had come into his
ownership, and getting it running.
It was soon discovered that the engine had no internals, and
in fact appeared to never have had any! No matter, in 2013 he
handed the project over to Ginetto Clerici. Soon Enrico Sironi,
director of the MV museum at Cascina Costa, was involved,
and a long paper chase uncovered drawings of the engine.
Suddenly, it seemed possible that the missing pieces could
be manufactured.
They were, and in a testament to the craftsmanship and
enthusiasm of Italy’s motorcycle manufacturing industry, the
300B is finally running. What man has made, man can make
again. MCBSA’s dead end: In the U.K.,
BSA’s industry-leading designers Bert
Hopwood and Doug Hele developed
the innovative MC1 250cc prototype in- Its double overhead cam, hori-
zontally mounted single-cylinder design
featured bevel-gear-driven camshafts and
four radial valves. Intended as the poten-
tial basis for a family of sophisticated rac-
ing and road models, it was stillborn.
Harley designed a winner, then
forgot about it: When Harley-Davidson
finally decided to build its overhead-
valve Sportster in the 1950s, it dug out
a pre-war prototype test mule. Based on
a flathead 45, it had logged more than
4,000 miles of road testing in 1939.
Electric dreams: Indian invented
the first electric starter for a motorcycle
back in 1914. Available on that year’sHendee Special, by 1915 it had already
been taken off the option list, a victim
of the limitations of the battery tech-
nology of the day; the batteries were
exhausted after a dozen or so starts
and the charging system couldn’t keep
them up. It wasn’t until the early 1960s
that Japanese motorcycle manufacturers
would bring the electric starter to market
on their early small-capacity models.Dead ends and false starts: BSA, Harley and Indian
Rockerarm boxes on the forward-inclined parallel twin make it look like it has double overhead camshafts; it doesn’t.Indian offered the first electric starter on a motorcycle in 1914 (left). BSA’s clever 4-valve overhead cam single (above).18 MOTORCYCLE CLASSICS September/October 2017